Kevin & Sarah Unfiltered: Behind the Scenes of the Homestead

[00:00:00] Speaker A: When we got married at 22, we ne. This was never in our dreams. We never thought we would be. I wouldn't have never thought I would have been canning and gardening and learning how to bake bread and milking a cow and all those. No. Oh, you know, I was, I was into medicine. I was a feminist back then. I didn't want to do any of those things. [00:00:24] Speaker B: We met at a coffee shop. Sarah was in college and I hung out at the coffee shop. [00:00:32] Speaker A: There were people at our work that were starting to say, well, you know, if all, you know what breaks loose, we know where we're going to go. We're going to go to Kevin and Sarah's place. And so safety wise, we started feeling very vulnerable. [00:00:47] Speaker C: Welcome Kevin and Sarah from Living Traditions Homestead. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:00:52] Speaker C: Thank you for joining us on the Duster Mud podcast today. [00:00:54] Speaker B: Thank you. We were living in Phoenix and I worked. Well, we both worked for the same company, but we worked for a company that dealt a lot with the government and things like that. And there were things that we were just hearing and seeing and we got kind of nervous about and we knew we were living in a Valley with 7 million people with basically two roads in and out and we got freaked out and we realized the desert wasn't the place to be and we needed to be more self reliant. Yeah, that's how we got to Missouri. [00:01:30] Speaker A: We felt very vulnerable. But even prior to that we had seen kind of the direction of kind of where food was going in our country and in the world and where health was going in the country and in our world. And we just wanted something different for out for ourselves and for our children as well. So between that and feeling very vulnerable and I don't know, we just felt like we needed to get out of town and learn more skills and just kind of be on our own more. [00:02:00] Speaker D: So was there a particular thing or moment that caused that concern? [00:02:09] Speaker B: I don't know if there was one particular moment. I think just it, it just became more and more clear where we were living, how populated it was, how kind of fake. Especially like the Phoenix area is. You know, everybody irrigates, everybody. Like it looks very green. There's lots of stuff growing there when you go there. But if that were to go away, like it's desert, like you're going back to desert really fast and that's pretty scary when you, when you are thinking about being self sufficient, like if you don't have water, you're in a desert. You know, it's 100, you know, the last summer we were there, we had 100 days in a row, over 100 degrees. So. And honestly, most of those were like 105 to 110. The day we actually moved to Missouri, it was 118 when we were leaving Arizona. [00:03:08] Speaker A: And that was not anomaly. I mean, that was very common. [00:03:12] Speaker B: Right. [00:03:13] Speaker A: But we also felt vulnerable. Like, security wise. We had been living in an urban homestead. We had bought kind of a small urban farm, and we're living there and the people that we worked with, we were sharing with them. I mean, we cannot help but share what we do. You know, it's just inside of us. And so a lot of people were finding out that, you know, we were growing gardens in the middle of the city. We were growing chickens and yeah, we. [00:03:41] Speaker B: Raised pigs, we had goats, everything, like. [00:03:44] Speaker A: In town, you know, they knew I was canning. And so there were people at our work that were starting to say, well, you know, if all, you know, what breaks loose, we know where we're going to go. We're going to go to Kevin and Sarah's place. And so safety wise, we started feeling very vulnerable. Yeah, so that was one of the other reasons why we were like, we need to get out of here quickly. And yeah, we want to take care. [00:04:10] Speaker C: Of ourselves, but we can't take care of everybody. [00:04:12] Speaker A: Absolutely correct. [00:04:14] Speaker C: But when people freak out, they freak out. [00:04:17] Speaker A: And, you know, we had started getting an overwhelming feeling that we needed to get out, like something was coming. We kept feeling that. I really truly believe it was the Holy Spirit telling us that we needed to get out of there, we needed to build more skills, we needed to be more independent, food wise. And so we were feeling a sense of urgency coming from somewhere. And I think that's really what sparked our real desire to get out and to get out quickly. Because really, once we, once we decided that we needed to go, it was in less than a year that we had gotten our finances straight. We got a plan, a financial plan in place what we were going to do. We decided on a location. We came out to this area to kind of look around a little bit. We ended up buying a place and here in the Ozarks. And within six months we moved, left our jobs and, and moved. So it did happen. It did happen pretty quickly. [00:05:21] Speaker D: It sounds a lot like us. [00:05:23] Speaker C: So much like us. [00:05:24] Speaker D: You know, in, in January, I told Shel, like, would you please just plan us a trip to go look at some property? I just, I feel like we need to buy some property. [00:05:36] Speaker C: Land. [00:05:36] Speaker D: We need land. By March, we had closed on it in June. We lived here. [00:05:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:40] Speaker D: I mean, and I was exactly. [00:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah. We bought ours in January, closed on it in March and moved in July. [00:05:48] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [00:05:49] Speaker C: And it was a sense of urgency, too. We were sitting in the middle of the suburbs, just outside of Washington D.C. at a four way stop. And I tell people our pandemic experience was different than people out here in Missouri. We really did have food shortages there. Really. We really were rationed meat. We really did. He, we weren't allowed on the roads. He's working at the Pentagon. He had to have papers saying he was key and essential so that he could drive on the road in case. [00:06:21] Speaker D: I got stopped by the cops because I was actually on the road. [00:06:24] Speaker C: Like, this is the stuff in movies, right. You know, and so that was our experience. And then when it hit us to leave, it was the same sort of urgency, like, we gotta go. And it was 2021 by this, by the time this happened. It was, we gotten through the, the worst of it and we had moved on past it. But it was still that sense of something. [00:06:48] Speaker D: But once you've, once you've felt that vulnerability. I don't, I don't. I mean, a few generations ago, it was the Depression, right. And like my great grandparents, they always had food everywhere in their house. They had deep freezes, they had things canned, they had dried goods. Like they had food everywhere. They never threw anything away, they, they never wasted anything. And even in town, he was growing vegetables. I mean, I think that once. And not that our supply chain issues that we experienced in 2020 were anything to compare to the Depression, but once you've felt that vulnerability, I think that at least for us, it's the nearest. Yeah. [00:07:36] Speaker B: And you didn't know how long it was going to last or how bad it was going to get. You know what I mean? [00:07:42] Speaker D: And it was, we had just put a whole beef in our freezer. And the impact even emotionally as a father, husband, the provider, the sole provider for the family, the impact of having a freezer full of beef was something that, like, we never wanted to be without that again. [00:08:06] Speaker C: Right. [00:08:07] Speaker D: You know, and so that was huge in our decision in what started out to be, we want to grow our own food. [00:08:15] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:16] Speaker D: Much like, I mean, we were watching you guys, right? And saying, I think we need to do that. [00:08:22] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like Sarah said, we felt like we were being told to move. You know, we moved in 2016. So we had been out here four plus years by the time the pandemic hit. Now, thinking back I mean, you know, we believe that God works in weird ways. Sometimes we really feel like he may have been telling us to get out here and start doing everything we were doing because the pandemic was coming and there were going to be people who needed to hear or needed to see what. What they could do during that time. [00:08:58] Speaker D: Right. [00:08:59] Speaker B: You know what I mean? And so, yeah. [00:09:01] Speaker A: So many things. So, so many things. Looking back now, we're just, you know, we're divine. Just so many things. We never ever thought we would be doing this. You know, when we got married at 22, we. This was never in our dreams. We never thought we would be. I wouldn't have never thought I would have been canning and gardening and learning how to bake bread and milking a cow and all those kinds. No. Oh, you know, I was, I was. I was a feminist back then. I didn't want to do any of those things, you know, and come to find out that's been God's plan. And to. Then to teach people on camera. [00:09:44] Speaker C: So you said just a second ago that you guys got married at 22. Take us back a little bit, if you don't mind. Like, how did you guys meet? [00:09:52] Speaker B: We met at a coffee shop. Sarah was in college and I hung out at the coffee shop. [00:10:01] Speaker C: And she walked in. [00:10:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:10:04] Speaker C: So college time you got married fairly young, like. We did. Yeah. [00:10:09] Speaker B: We started dating when we were 19, got married when we were 22. [00:10:12] Speaker C: Nice and nice. [00:10:14] Speaker B: Now we're. I'm about to be 49 in less than a month. So 26 years married, almost 30 years together. [00:10:23] Speaker D: That's cool. [00:10:24] Speaker C: Wow. Congratulations. [00:10:25] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:10:26] Speaker C: Because it's not always easy marriage on any level. Even on the good ones. The good ones especially because the good ones have been through it, you know, the good ones, they. We have a good marriage and the. [00:10:42] Speaker B: Had. [00:10:43] Speaker D: No, she said have. [00:10:47] Speaker C: We have a good marriage and a good relationship. But that doesn't mean that everything is always just rosy and that we agree on everything. And the ones that last, I think, are the ones that work through those things, you know, and it's hard. Relationships are worth it, but they're work, you know. So congratulations on 30 years of being together. For sure. From Wisconsin. Yeah. Where it's cold. [00:11:14] Speaker B: Yes. So we. Yeah, we grew up in Wisconsin. Then we. After we got married, we moved as far south as you can get. We moved to Brownsville, Texas, or near Brownsville? Near Brownsville, Texas. [00:11:26] Speaker A: Just off of South Padre Island. [00:11:29] Speaker B: Yeah, just in. I worked in real estate on South Padre Island. [00:11:32] Speaker C: Oh, fun. [00:11:33] Speaker B: Sarah Worked for a company that ran group homes for people with disabilities. And then we lived there about a year. Realized that was too much of a change for, you know, we were 23 years old, you know, didn't know anybody. So I had a friend who lived in Phoenix and so I went there to visit him. And, you know, when you're that age, like, it was like I. I went to visit him and came back, I was like, hey, let's move to Phoenix. And like four days later, we packed everything we owned in a 10 foot U haul and drove to Phoenix. You know, it's like, here we are. [00:12:10] Speaker A: You know, like on Thanksgiving Day. [00:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:12] Speaker C: Oh, wow. [00:12:13] Speaker D: There you go. [00:12:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanksgiving Day in 2001. 2001. [00:12:18] Speaker A: 2000. The end of 2000. [00:12:23] Speaker D: Our first move after we got married was for a few weeks we were living with my mom and dad in my bedroom and we moved together to the University of Central Florida, up to Orlando. And so our first move, we borrowed a horse trailer from our neighbor and moved our things. I didn't quite get the horse poop cleaned out well enough. [00:12:49] Speaker A: Oh, boy. [00:12:50] Speaker D: So by the time we got there, all of our stuff had, you know, dried horse poop all over it. [00:12:55] Speaker A: At least it was dry. [00:12:55] Speaker B: It was foreshadowing for the future. Right. [00:12:59] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:13:00] Speaker C: Well, when we moved out here, we had some stuff in a livestock trailer. [00:13:03] Speaker D: Yeah, we did. [00:13:04] Speaker C: So hopefully our last move. Yeah, Please, Lord. Right, right. [00:13:10] Speaker A: We keep saying that and then we keep moving, but I don't want to move anymore. [00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah, but now we own a lot more crap. [00:13:17] Speaker A: Every move, we accumulate more. [00:13:19] Speaker B: I'm not moving again. No. [00:13:22] Speaker C: Speaking of crap. Homesteading, man. So you guys, I don't. Do you. I think you're kind of pioneers in this homesteading. Even time in this time of the 2000 and twenties, I didn't even know what homesteading really was. You know, the concept kind of y'all blossomed it, I guess, maybe, or brought it back around. Yes. It's an old concept, but it's been revitalized. And you have a lot of animals on that homestead. [00:13:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we've had a lot come and go. [00:13:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:57] Speaker B: At times we have a lot. At times we don't. And that's. Yeah, that's one thing we've learned that there's a big. You know, people have a hard time not knowing the difference between livestock and pets. [00:14:10] Speaker D: That's so true. [00:14:12] Speaker B: And, you know, as homesteaders or farmers, livestock comes, comes and goes. [00:14:18] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:14:19] Speaker B: But. [00:14:19] Speaker A: Well, even throughout the year, I mean, think about spring, summer, and most of it goes by fall. And really, we try to do that so that we have a lot less to do over the winter. [00:14:29] Speaker B: Sure. [00:14:29] Speaker A: It's not fun breaking ice. I'd rather have my pigs in the freezer rather than trying to break ice on ice. [00:14:35] Speaker B: Rather than trying to break ice. Exactly. [00:14:38] Speaker A: You know, so, yeah, things do come and go. [00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:41] Speaker A: And we've, you know, we've tried. We've tried almost all of the stereotypical homesteading animals. [00:14:47] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:48] Speaker A: And, you know, some we've loved and some we've hated. And, you know, how do you. [00:14:54] Speaker B: I've never been crazy enough to try sheep. [00:14:57] Speaker C: I hear those sheep people crazy. [00:14:59] Speaker D: Oh, man, you are so good at trimming their hooves, though. [00:15:04] Speaker A: We're good helpers. [00:15:06] Speaker D: How do you. How do you mentally work through the nose? Like, how does it. How do you say no to the animal, stop doing it and not feel like it's somehow a failure or you've failed to do something? Like, you know, every time we talk about not doing something, like, even, say, the guineas, man, we were so annoyed with the guineas for such a long time, but we couldn't. We couldn't bring ourselves to not have the guineas, because maybe new farmers or new homesteaders, there's a feeling of failure if you stop doing something. So what is your process or your mindset or your thought behind stopping something? [00:16:03] Speaker B: I mean, we feel the same way. A lot of times. We do feel like failures, especially. It's different. It's different when you're also, at the same time, broadcasting everything you do online. [00:16:15] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:16:16] Speaker B: Because you feel the need to justify every decision you make. [00:16:21] Speaker D: Yep. [00:16:22] Speaker B: And that makes every decision that much harder because, like, how are we gonna. Just, like. So, like, a couple years ago, we stopped breeding pigs. Like, we. We were into breeding pigs. And, like, I enjoy raising pigs. I did not really enjoy having breeder pigs. So we decided we were going to get out of it. We weren't making any money doing it. We just. It was more work than we wanted, especially over the winter. But we probably thought about that for two years before we actually did it, because, like, how. You know, we were the ones who talked maybe thousands of people into doing this, and now we're going to stop. Like, that makes it a much bigger decision to do things. And. But at some point, we need to. Like, there needs to be a balance between, like, the online life and the real life, and the real life in that situation had to win out because we were just getting burned out, you know? [00:17:19] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:17:19] Speaker B: And now going back to raising pigs. Get them in the spring Butcher them in the early winter and have the rest of the winter off. Beautiful. Love it. [00:17:28] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:17:28] Speaker A: But in some cases, we. It's been almost like a graduation to a different kind of animal rather than a failure and just giving up, like, transitioning from dairy goats to dairy cows. You know, I don't feel like a failure with dairy goats at all. We just had kind of. We just kind of graduated to something that made more sense for us. Same with rabbits. I mean, I have some mixed feelings about rabbits. I love to raise rabbits, but, you know, I've become known as the lady who teaches about rabbits and knows a lot about rabbits, and I sure do. I sure do know a lot about rabbits, and I do enjoy teaching it. But there was a time where we wanted to kind of graduate away from rabbits, but because we just. We have so much other meat sources on our homestead, you know, for a long time, we relied heavily on rabbit and, you know, other small animals like chickens and turkeys and ducks and things for meat and quail. But there just came a time where, like Kevin had said, said we were just kind of burnt out, needed to downsize a little bit, and rabbits were, you know, one of the things we could let go of. But on the other hand, with our public preference, public presence, that kind of makes it hard to be the rabbit guru when you don't have rabbits on the homestead Right. Anymore, you know? [00:18:50] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:18:51] Speaker A: Um, so. So we have rabbits again, and I enjoy having them. Um, but, you know, sometimes it's not a failure. Sometimes you're just graduating to the next. [00:19:02] Speaker C: Bigger step, so that makes sense. Yeah. We have a hard time with no period. [00:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, we do, too. I mean, really, what we do normally is we'll add, add, add, add, add, add, add. Until we're like, seriously at the end of our rope. And then we're like, okay, something needs to give. You know what I mean? And then we'll, like. So like, once every year and a half, two years, we probably sit down and are like, what. What needs to stop, Right? Because, you know, when you think about, like, okay, well, we're gonna add this, or we're gonna add this, and you think about, okay, well, that's not that much extra work. It's like five minutes a day or 10 minutes a day, Right? Like, we can feed one more animal. But then you don't think of, like, all the other things. Right. Like you guys are experiencing now with pigs. Like, there's more than just, let's go out twice a day and feed the pigs. And then at the end. We'll haul them to the butcher and that's it. Right. I mean there's like, we need to castrate them on time. We need to like, make sure they're, you know, are they bred, are they not bred? Like, there's, there's all these things that go into every decision and like those are the little things that like, you know, you don't, first of all, you don't see in a 20 or 30 minute YouTube video. Right, right. Like, that's not the part that everybody gets to see, but it's the time. It's the part that just sucks. Your time. [00:20:24] Speaker D: Yeah. Or even your mental space. [00:20:27] Speaker A: I was just gonna say that. [00:20:28] Speaker B: Right. Yes. [00:20:30] Speaker A: It's a lot of responsibility and it's a lot of pressure and sometimes it's overwhelming. [00:20:35] Speaker C: Is there one of, is there an animal group that has kind of taught you more about homesteading than any other group of animals that you like? This is. This taught us the most. [00:20:52] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:20:56] Speaker B: I guess I've never thought of that. But I do always tell, like for new people who are starting homesteading and they want to know especially about like raising and processing their own meat because we try to do as much of our own processing as we can. I always tell everybody everything is either a big chicken or a big rabbit. So start with those two animals. If you can butcher a chicken, you can butcher a turkey, you can butcher, you know, any other bird. If you can butcher a rabbit, you can butcher a pig because it's just a big rabbit. [00:21:28] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:21:29] Speaker B: You know, so start with those because they're easy, you know, and work your way up. [00:21:36] Speaker C: I have said often here on our farm, even though we're farm more commercial, we don't, I don't consider it a homestead, but around, I guess we're a farmstead because around the house we have our garden and we have our dairy cows and which we were absolutely not going to do, but that's another story. But we do do it and people ask us which one of everything would. What would you not give up? [00:22:05] Speaker D: Or what would be the last thing? Like if you, if you had to start downsizing, what would be the last thing left on your farm or farmstead? [00:22:14] Speaker C: And by far it's the dairy cow. [00:22:17] Speaker D: For us, our, our answer is always the dairy cow. [00:22:20] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:22:20] Speaker D: The, the layer chickens would be the second to last and the dairy cow would be the last. [00:22:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with that. [00:22:27] Speaker A: Yep. [00:22:28] Speaker B: Because, well, dairy cows are I think the most important animal you have. But because you can also raise their calf for Me so. [00:22:37] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:22:38] Speaker B: But they're also, for the most part self sustaining. Same with, I mean, layer chickens. Yes. They're going to decrease a lot, but you can literally just raise them off. [00:22:49] Speaker D: Scraps, go forage, you know, Go forage. [00:22:51] Speaker B: And have scraps, you know? Yeah, we. We get asked that question a lot too, and we've thought about that a lot. Pigs would go first for us because. [00:23:01] Speaker D: They require the most input. [00:23:03] Speaker B: We raise pasture pigs. Right. We raise Idaho pasture pigs, which is great. They eat grass, but they don't eat just grass. And if you try to raise them on justgrass, they'll die. So there's no such thing as a pig that can just go graze like a cow. [00:23:17] Speaker D: Right. [00:23:17] Speaker B: You still have to give them grain. And we feed, I mean, a lot of grain. They by far eat more than. If we didn't like pork. It wouldn't be worth our time. Yeah. You know what I mean? [00:23:28] Speaker A: It's the most expensive meat that we raise on our homestead. [00:23:31] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. And then we. We'd downsize our cattle to the point where, you know, we'd only have enough for what the land can. [00:23:41] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:23:42] Speaker B: Handle without because we don't bale our own hay, so. But we could graze you around if we needed to with just a few head of cattle. [00:23:49] Speaker C: Right. We feel the same way. [00:23:51] Speaker D: Yeah. Right. We could down. We. The. Surprisingly, although there are a considerable amount of work, the sheep would probably go after the cows, I think, because you can. They reproduce so much more quickly and you can have so much more on the same amount of land. I think that if we had to make those decisions, the beef cows would probably go before the sheep do, which I can't believe I'm even saying. [00:24:19] Speaker A: They're also a smaller animal, which in that situation is better. [00:24:24] Speaker D: Yeah, true. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Imagine processing a cow. First of all, you'd have to do it here, and that's hard. And then all of a sudden you would need a way to either preserve immediately or refrigerate immediately because there's no way you could eat it all immediately. And sheep, I mean, that's a lot easier. I could can an entire sheep on a fire with a pressure canner in a day. Oh, yeah, no problem. But I couldn't do that with a cow. Yeah, rabbits, you can just eat the entire thing. You know, you wouldn't have to worry about refrigerating or preserving at all. [00:24:54] Speaker D: And we've. We've talked about that a lot about our, you know, what is your emergency preparedness? Well, it's. It's walking around out there for sure. For us. You know, it stays on the hook. [00:25:05] Speaker B: Meat on the hoof is, is valuable, right? [00:25:08] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. [00:25:09] Speaker C: Right. That's preserved just fine right out there. [00:25:13] Speaker A: Right, right. You just need to protect it. [00:25:15] Speaker D: Yes, yes, there's that. [00:25:16] Speaker A: That's issue number two. [00:25:19] Speaker C: So speaking of preserving, you know, canner extraordinaire here sitting with us. I do. I'm not the canner. You know, I just, I'd love to, but you're amazing at it because you have an amazing garden, you guys. Oh my gosh. And the greenhouse and your above ground raised beds. Thank you. See, not the gardener this year. Thank goodness for our in laws, huh? But let's talk gardening. Let's talk some homestead kind of must haves, I think to get into the sustainability factor of what you guys grow. [00:26:01] Speaker D: Well, yeah, I mean, maybe the answer is gardening. Like let's pose it as where would you start if you were brand new to this and you were looking around the nation saying everything just feels vulnerable to me with the food system the way that it is. I think I would like to start becoming more self sustaining. Where would you start? Would it be a garden? Would it be the chicken and the rabbit? Like where would, where would be step one? [00:26:35] Speaker A: Well, for sure, with the animals. Chickens and rabbits, definitely. We've always said, and we've always done this, we've always planted things that are going to take the longest to mature first. A garden could be planted in a month. And you know, it's very fast. You can do that anytime, depending on weather. But you're planting an orchard and berry plants is important because it takes so long for them to mature. So the faster you get them in the ground, the faster you're going to get there. But other than that, you know, layer chickens, rabbits and a garden. [00:27:13] Speaker B: Well, if you're, if you're just starting in a normal, you know, backyard in town. [00:27:18] Speaker D: Yeah, that. [00:27:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you know, you have to look at laws. What's legal? You know, I, I always live by ask for forgiveness, not permission. Especially in your own yard. I know that that's maybe not the best policy to have, but you know, if you're truly worried, you know, most, most places don't have restrictions on rabbits. They're just pets. [00:27:39] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:27:40] Speaker B: You know, they just happen to be pets you can eat. [00:27:42] Speaker D: Interestingly, when we were living in a neighborhood in Maryland, the suburbs of Washington D.C. we had six layer chickens because we were allowed to have six layer chickens. And we had the, you know, local ordinance, ordinance enforcer show up because somebody tattled on us and said that we had roosters and you're not allowed to have roosters. [00:28:08] Speaker B: Right. [00:28:09] Speaker D: And so we had to show the local ordnance guy that no, we have six layers hens, you know. No, no roosters. [00:28:18] Speaker B: Right. [00:28:19] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:28:20] Speaker C: There was a house about four houses down. They did have roosters. [00:28:24] Speaker D: They did. But we did not tattle on them and send the local ordinance guy to their house. [00:28:28] Speaker C: No. [00:28:29] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. All that stuff drives me crazy. [00:28:34] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:28:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:36] Speaker C: So you guys used to plant in the ground. And I know you talk about this quite a bit on your recent videos, maybe over the past year when you got. When you transitioned to raised beds. How has that. What is your overall impression from going from in the ground, which is what we do, to the. To the raised bed. Would you. [00:29:01] Speaker B: If you live in a place where you can garden in the ground and your ground is good, go for it? [00:29:07] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:29:08] Speaker B: I think it's by far the best way to garden. [00:29:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:29:11] Speaker B: Much less inputs, much less work, you know, much less cost to get up and running. But like on our property, so our first homestead here in Missouri, we had great ground. We could garden in the ground, no problem. Like, there were no rocks. There were like we could till it. We could do everything we needed to do. Our second place, where we are now, terrible. It's like underneath the grass, it's literally like gravel. The entire. [00:29:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like a gravel driveway. [00:29:42] Speaker B: Right. The entire place. So it's not like rocks you could pick out. It's like, it's gravel. And so we really had no choice but to switch to raised beds. I mean, we could have spent the next 10 years plus trying to build the soil. [00:29:58] Speaker A: But we want food now. [00:30:00] Speaker B: We want food now. [00:30:01] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:30:01] Speaker B: You know what I mean? And the best way to do that was to switch to raised beds. [00:30:04] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, she says we have an inch ground garden. Ish. Right. We put. We put a barrier around it and started bringing soil in. So for all intents and purposes, it is a giant. It is a giant raised bed. You know, it's a 30 by 50 garden plot, but it's not in the ground. [00:30:23] Speaker A: But our ground. Of the ground. [00:30:27] Speaker D: Yeah. I'm just saying our, our soil is the same way, though. It's. It's just gravel underneath. We have about. In that spot, I think it was about 3 or 4 inches maybe of topsoil and then it was. It just turns into gravel and. Or clay. [00:30:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:42] Speaker C: I'm really glad that you said, you know, if you're, if you have good soil, bury it in the Ground. Because there are advantages to burying in the ground. And oftentimes, especially when we're on YouTube, people think that's the way they need to do it. And it becomes sort of almost like a trend item to, well, I have to do it above ground. Well, not if you have good dirt. [00:31:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:31:02] Speaker C: Or soil. [00:31:03] Speaker B: Do it. If you can grow in the ground, I mean, you water way less because, I mean, raised beds dry out fast. Like the raised beds we're using now, we love them. But we had to water every day this summer. Every day. [00:31:15] Speaker C: Right. [00:31:15] Speaker B: Where when we were growing in the ground, we could get by with watering twice a week. You know what I mean? [00:31:20] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:31:21] Speaker B: There's really no. No such thing as deep water in the raised beds. Because if you just over water. I mean, now, on the other hand, now. So that takes us to an advantage. Right. Is that when we got 15 inches of rain in 48 hours, our raised beds did just suffer because they have great drainage, and it just goes away. [00:31:40] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:31:40] Speaker B: When we were growing in the ground and you got 15 inches of rain, you might lose your whole garden. [00:31:45] Speaker C: Right. [00:31:45] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:31:46] Speaker B: So, you know, pluses and minuses. [00:31:49] Speaker D: Yeah. Interestingly, hours with the big rain events, you can see it seeping down the hill. You know, like, it's not right at the edge of the garden, but about four or five feet down, you start seeing the water coming out from the garden. [00:32:05] Speaker C: You know, we don't live on level ground. [00:32:08] Speaker D: Yeah. But I mean, it hits that layer of rock and clay and how it goes and just, you know, it doesn't really seep deep even for us either. Yeah. [00:32:18] Speaker B: That's what's happening under our house, actually. We just had to have an encapsulation done under our house because same, same thing. It's like, you know, the water soaks in, like, rock outside of the house, hits rock, and that shelf rock just happened to come up under our house. So all that rainwater is, like, coming under our. Our new house. Oh, problem solved. Now we put a French drain around on the inside of the foundation and all of that. So it's solved now, but same concept. Right. It's like. It's just. It's got to come out somewhere and. [00:32:50] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:32:52] Speaker B: In our crawl space. Wow. [00:32:56] Speaker D: One of the things that's interesting to me and I struggle with having talked to you and I struggle with. Is in. In my opinion, in my mind, you have struck a balance between practicality and ideology, and I don't feel like I have a handle on that. I will use the sheep as an example. We lost probably half of our flock that we purchased because of an ideology, a mindset that we have had that said we are grass only, no additional inputs. That's the way we're doing things. And once we made that decision, it was like, it took a lot of thinking and a lot of additional research and a lot of gut wrenching turning. And I know it may seem silly, but we were set on, this is grass only. We are not doing this and we're not doing that. And like this mindset, I feel like that we fall prey to. I feel like when we've had conversations with you and even like watching your garden this year, you talked about in your raised beds at the beginning of the year, you were having issues and instead of saying we don't fertilize, you went in and you fertilized your garden and you grew an amazing garden. And like this, the balance that you've struck is impressive to me. Would you mind just talking to us a little bit about that? Because I know how you feel strongly about things, but yet you seem to have struck a practicality balance that is very admirable to me. So I'm very interested to hear about that. [00:35:19] Speaker B: I think for us, we keep our eye on the goal, which is we need food for our family. So like, I mean, you guys, you know, you want to provide food to the masses for us, you know, and I think that's really kind of the difference between homesteading and farming, although there's such a blurred line. But like, you know, our focus has always been providing food for our family, not necessarily to everybody else. Right? Yeah. So we keep our eye on that goal. Well, if our garden fails, we don't get that food this year. Like that's, that's a big loss. So we don't ever hold. I mean, you're right, we don't hold on to any ideology so strongly that we're going to say, well, we're not going to fertilize. [00:36:10] Speaker A: Like, you know, I'd rather not have a garden at all than to fertilize. We're not going to say that. No, I would rather have the food for my family. [00:36:18] Speaker B: Right. [00:36:18] Speaker A: And fertilize knowing that it's still better than from the grocery store. Definitely better than starving. [00:36:25] Speaker B: So like this year when our garden started to do bad, which, you know, was because we switched the first year in raised beds and the soil that we used wasn't good soil or wasn't ready to be good soil yet. And so we, you know, our initial thought was, okay, we need To. We need to fertilize. Like, we figured out that was the issue. We need to fertilize. [00:36:45] Speaker D: Okay. [00:36:46] Speaker B: We like to be as organic as we can. What organic fertilizer can we use? Okay. So we did all that research. All the organic fertilizer that we could find that would work quickly would still take six weeks to three months to make a difference on the plants. Our whole garden would have been dead by then. [00:37:06] Speaker D: Yes. [00:37:07] Speaker B: Chemical fertilizer or traditional fertilizer works instantly. All right. So for a month, we had to use regular fertilizer to get things under control, apply the organic fertilizer so that. That would have time to get ready to start working. But we had to do something. You know, it's like if an animal is sick, you know, we don't. We don't pre treat animals for sickness, but if, like our bull, we said take them to the vet. Well, we're not going to not give them antibiotics when we have a $5,000 bull that could potentially have to be put down if we don't give them some antibiotics. Come on. [00:37:47] Speaker A: Doesn't make sense. [00:37:47] Speaker B: You know what I mean? Like, I'm not out there pumping animals full of antibiotics, but if they need it, just like the garden needed to fertilize, I mean, it's just we need to do what we need to do to grow food. [00:37:59] Speaker A: Right. [00:38:00] Speaker C: Sounds like we talk about it a lot here. Is good, better, best, right? [00:38:05] Speaker B: Sure. [00:38:05] Speaker C: And do we want the best? Absolutely. But sometimes we go. Gotta go with good. Like, this is really good. You know, I don't think that produce from the grocery store class, I mean, I guess it's okay if you're in a pinch, you know? Yes, of course. [00:38:21] Speaker D: It's better than a cheetah. [00:38:23] Speaker B: It's better than a Cheeto, Right? Yeah. Is lettuce from the store better? Better than Oreos, right? Yes. Right. [00:38:29] Speaker C: So good. We. We apply that often. Good, better, best. And whenever you get into. Especially when you get into the better category, you're winning. Like, you're really winning. [00:38:39] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:39] Speaker C: And a garden with some traditional fertilizer is eons better than produce you would buy at the grocery store. [00:38:52] Speaker B: Sure. [00:38:53] Speaker C: So that. That makes a lot of sense. [00:38:55] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:38:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:38:56] Speaker A: One thing, practicality of it, one thing that we realized over time, basically, you know, as we've moved from one homestead to another, you know, we've increased the land size that we've had to work with, which has allowed us to scale up in certain areas. By doing that, we've had to kind of humble ourselves and realize that we can't do everything on a large scale in the same way as we could do on a small scale. We cannot fertilize a 23 acre hay field with rabbit manure or compost tea. You just can't do that. And our beef cattle who wander across our entire property, we cannot use their manure to fertilize the hay field because they aren't living in one spot where we can just shovel it up and put it in a manure spreader like the dairy farms can. They can do that because they keep their animals in one area so they can just scoop up all their poop and then put it out on their field. So we can't do that. Do we want to be able. Do we want to fertilize our hay field with chemical fertilizer? No, but the guy who cuts our hay says, I'm not cutting your hay unless you fertilize the hay field. So that's what we do. [00:40:18] Speaker D: Yeah. You know, which I just, I commend you. I really do think that you've struck a balance that is, it's a, a good example, I think, for, for others to follow that. You know, there is, there's a place for an ideology. There's a place for trying to do everything in a certain way. And then there's also a place for just getting it done. [00:40:41] Speaker B: Right. [00:40:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:41] Speaker D: You know. [00:40:42] Speaker B: Well, you know, I think a lot of times is like homesteaders, we forget that a lot of these things started for, for, for good reasons. Like, like fertilizers were developed for good reasons that, you know, now have they been overdone? I mean, same with antib. Like, hands down, antibiotics have saved more lives, human and animal, than anything in history. Like, so there's a place for them. Right? I mean, have they been overdone? Sure, absolutely. [00:41:11] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:41:12] Speaker B: You know, but we forget that these things came about for good reasons and using them kind of in the way they originally intended isn't necessarily bad. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, you know, we, like nine months out of the year, our cattle are on 100 grass that hasn't been sprayed, hasn't been anything. Right. But for three months out of the year, over winter, they are fed hay from our property that, yes, nine months prior to that was fertilized with some. [00:41:42] Speaker D: Regular fertilizer, which means it has a higher nutrient content and is better for the cows. Right. At the end of the day. Right. I mean, like, you're actually. The grass is better, but that means that the hay is better. You know, the Cows are getting more nutrient nutrition out of that hay because you made the decision to fertilize your hay, Right? Yeah. [00:42:03] Speaker B: Because if we, honestly, if we didn't fertilize, if we just said we're not going to fertilize and like we can't fertilize that much naturally, so then we're just not going to do anything. We'd really. We'd be feeding our cows bailed weeds. [00:42:15] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:42:16] Speaker B: Is what we'd end up feeding them. [00:42:18] Speaker A: You know, or buying hay from the somebody else fertilized and then you fertilized anyway and maybe sprayed and may have, you know, GMO alfalfa in it. I mean, like, we still have control. Even though we're putting down chemical fertilizer, we still have all the control, you know, Whereas buying it from somebody else, no matter what they even say, you still have no idea if what you're getting, you know? [00:42:42] Speaker D: Yeah. Oh, yeah. [00:42:43] Speaker C: Oh, we know. [00:42:44] Speaker A: I think also we're living in a day and age where we, we have access to information online through videos and all that kind of thing, and we get caught up in, we get caught up in trends, but we also get caught up in ideology that people feel should work in every single situation. You know, I do. And I think that it is kind of detrimental for us to go into homesteading or farming by learning things online thinking that everything's going to work for everybody all the time. And I think we can set ourselves up for failure in that way. Thinking, well, you know, so and so says, you know, the best way and what everybody should do is this way. Well, that doesn't work for us. And there, you know, we can feel like failures if it doesn't work for us, if other people are using a certain way. [00:43:44] Speaker B: You know, I think an example of that for us is like mob grazing. [00:43:48] Speaker D: Right. [00:43:49] Speaker B: Like we do rotational grazing. We move our cattle around our property. They have different paddocks and we move them when they need to be moved. We do not go out and move them four times a day to a quarter every day. [00:44:01] Speaker A: I mean, let's, let's not over exaggerate, but you know, we don't do it every day. [00:44:05] Speaker B: Right. [00:44:05] Speaker A: You know, and there are some temporary. [00:44:08] Speaker B: Fences and you know, like that's just. That doesn't work for us. [00:44:11] Speaker D: So the first year that we were farming, we moved our sheep and cows every day, both groups. Oh, and livestock guardian dogs, because they were puppies. They were puppies and they had to be near the sheep but couldn't be with the sheep. So why don't you know, man, that amount of work. Absolutely just. But like, absolutely. But we came into it with the, the ideology, the feeling that if you don't do it this way, you're failing. And I may, I may like strong type A fear of failure person. So like the motivation is high to succeed. [00:44:48] Speaker B: I'm the same way. [00:44:49] Speaker C: And when you set out to do a thing and that is your intention and that's what you've said that you're going to do. Well, we said, we said that we're going to rotate our cows every day when we moved out here. Or we said this is the way we were going to do it. [00:45:04] Speaker A: Right. [00:45:05] Speaker C: And this was our original intention. But then you get on your property and you find out that maybe your property isn't quite as nutritious as someone else's property a little further north from. [00:45:18] Speaker A: Of you or on the other side of the country. I mean, let's be honest, you know. [00:45:22] Speaker B: Or even down the road I would say here. I mean, so like go back to the garden situation. Right. Like our two homesteads, our old homestead and our new homestead are like very close to each other. One had great soil for gardening. One has terrible soil for gardening. [00:45:36] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:45:37] Speaker B: I mean, you know, every piece of land is different. [00:45:41] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:45:41] Speaker C: And so we, we, we were, we were set out and we had said this what we're going to do. And we did it for a year, every single day. [00:45:50] Speaker A: Wow. [00:45:51] Speaker C: And that's, but that's all we did while we built our home. But that's all that we did. And then as our farm grew and as our around our home, we got our home. And as it grew and as things started happening and we just realized we can't do all this, like we, like we literally physically and time wise can't do everything. [00:46:17] Speaker D: Well, yeah. At some point, especially with a farm, like if you're trying to generate some kind of revenue, there is some amount of time that has to be spent on marketing and sales. [00:46:30] Speaker B: Right. [00:46:30] Speaker D: And there was zero time to spend on anything other than moving the sheep, moving the dogs, moving the cows. Right. You know, feeding the pigs, moving the pigs, you know, move the sheep, move the dogs, move the cows, feed the pigs, move the pig. I mean like it was just like all consuming and then it was, and. [00:46:51] Speaker C: It was okay and fun while that's all we were doing. You come on that next phase of whatever that next project is or whatever the next thing is that you feel like you're supposed to be doing next. And because with us there's always A next. I mean, but that's. So as we. As we got to building the farm and the vision that we had it, something had to back off. Like, something had to go. And so we stopped moving our cows every day. We do rotationally graze. [00:47:21] Speaker D: We do the same type of thing that you do. [00:47:22] Speaker C: Same. [00:47:23] Speaker D: We put them on a space of the size that we think is appropriate for the time, and we leave them there until it looks like, okay, it's time for them to move on, and they move to a new space, and. [00:47:35] Speaker C: We allow that to rest. And we do use practices that are good for the land. We do use regenerative practices that keep things coming back in a better, healthier way than what they started out. Yeah, yeah, for sure. [00:47:55] Speaker D: But we can't move them every day. [00:47:57] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:47:58] Speaker D: We would have to just get rid of them. And that's not. [00:48:01] Speaker B: Or. Or not do as much. Yeah, right. Like, you would just stop at that because, like an hour day is full. [00:48:08] Speaker D: That's right. Yeah. [00:48:09] Speaker B: You know, and I think, you know, one thing people don't see a lot on online too, when they're watching YouTubers and stuff, is that a lot of these YouTubers that you're seeing doing a lot of the stuff have people working for them. They may not be in the videos, they may not be on camera, but a lot of them have significant people behind the scenes that help with those things. When you're, you know, it's us two, it's you two. [00:48:33] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:48:34] Speaker B: You know, and most people who want to live this lifestyle just want to do it by themselves. They don't want employees and they don't want all of this stuff. Then you have to balance that. [00:48:43] Speaker C: I mean, and as we're doing it on camera, it's healthy to let people know that you Expectation management. [00:48:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:48:55] Speaker C: And to realize that you can't do everything right. Like, you. You just literally can't. [00:49:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Do one thing on our. Like, on our videos, just within the last couple of years, one thing we try to do is when we're doing a project, we try to say how many hours it took us. Like, oh, so we've been out here for, you know, six hours, eight hours, whatever. [00:49:20] Speaker D: No, it's 23 minutes. [00:49:22] Speaker A: Right, exactly. [00:49:23] Speaker B: The reason we did that is because I got an email from a guy who was like, will you please tell my wife? And this goes both ways. So I'm not just calling out women, but, like, it goes both ways. He's like, will you please explain to my wife that I cannot fence off an acre of Land in a half hour. Because that's what she sees on YouTube and she doesn't understand why these things are taking so long. [00:49:46] Speaker D: Right. [00:49:47] Speaker B: It's like, okay, you know, like that. [00:49:49] Speaker A: Took us three days. [00:49:50] Speaker C: That was a four day project. [00:49:52] Speaker B: Right. [00:49:53] Speaker D: The chicken mode, I think it was done in 30 minutes, wasn't it? [00:49:55] Speaker B: Right, exactly. You know. Right. So, yeah, so now we do try to always say like, you know, like this year we planted our berries. And I remember on that video, like, honestly, we thought that was going to be like a three or four hour project, ended up being like a 10 or 12 hour project. And I was like, I mean, luckily it was at the time of year where you can do a 10 or 12 hour project. But, you know, and I remember getting to the end of that video and being like, we've been out here 12 hours, you know, that's really good. We started at 8:00 this morning. 8:00 at night. [00:50:27] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:50:27] Speaker C: Give people a real understanding of how long a project really takes. [00:50:32] Speaker B: Right. [00:50:32] Speaker C: Because that's typically, I mean, on a farm, on a homestead, you're going to do some projects, right? [00:50:38] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, Right, Yeah. [00:50:41] Speaker B: But you also have to keep in mind, like all, you know, the project is one thing, but a lot of times the project then also leads to an another ongoing task. Right. So like now we have berries, now we need to water berries, now we need to pick berries, now we need to prune berries, now we need to. You know what I mean? Like, so it's like everything you add, right? Add it, right? Everything you add ads to somewhere down. [00:51:06] Speaker C: The line you got to make something out of those berries, right. And it's going to add to your heart. [00:51:10] Speaker B: Right, Right, right. So. So that's why every couple of years when we're, you know, how do you. [00:51:18] Speaker D: Do you have a plan for that or does it just sort of creep up and. [00:51:24] Speaker B: Oh, it just creeps up. [00:51:28] Speaker C: Homesteading creep. [00:51:29] Speaker D: Is that what it is? [00:51:30] Speaker C: It is, yeah. [00:51:31] Speaker D: It's not mission creep. [00:51:32] Speaker C: It's not mission creep, it's homesteading creep. And you know, the garden, for instance, It's. It's just 10 tomato plants or it's just six tobacco, tobacco, Tabasco plants. Just six Tabasco plants. [00:51:49] Speaker B: Right. [00:51:50] Speaker C: But at the end of the day. [00:51:51] Speaker A: There'S going to be like 30,000 Tabasco peppers. [00:51:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:51:55] Speaker C: That you have to do something with. [00:51:57] Speaker B: Right. [00:51:57] Speaker C: You know, and I think it's homesteading creep. Everything is a great idea. Singularly correct. [00:52:05] Speaker B: Correct. That's it. [00:52:06] Speaker C: But when it. But you. [00:52:08] Speaker B: All of these things are amazing. By Themselves, but piled on top of each other while it's still a great life. Oh, for sure. It's a tiring life. [00:52:19] Speaker C: Right. [00:52:20] Speaker B: It's easy to get burnt out. [00:52:22] Speaker A: Right. [00:52:23] Speaker B: It's easy to create your own version of what you were trying to leave behind. Right. Like we always laugh because we're like, we say we left the rat race, but now we work three times as many hours as we did when we created our own, you know, we've created our own rat race, you know. [00:52:44] Speaker D: I have, Yes, I do know I have. There have been a few times that I've sat down and said, I used to get a weekend. [00:52:53] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:52:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:52:54] Speaker A: Where's our vacation time? [00:52:56] Speaker D: Like I. [00:52:56] Speaker B: Right. [00:52:56] Speaker D: I did, honestly, I used to leave work. Yeah. Have a weekend, you know. [00:53:02] Speaker B: Right, well. [00:53:02] Speaker A: And your day ended at 5 or 6. [00:53:04] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:53:04] Speaker A: You know. [00:53:05] Speaker B: Right. And that, that's the beauty of. Right. A regular 9 to 5 job is that you have a very distinct start and stop time and then you can come home and do whatever you want. [00:53:17] Speaker A: Or nothing at all. [00:53:18] Speaker B: Or nothing at all. But in this lifestyle they're so intermingled that like, you know, like how many times AM I At 3 o'clock in the morning going, I don't know if I did this or I don't know if I did that. And now like it's raining or there's a storm and like, did I, did I close up the greenhouse? Did I, you know what I mean? Like, so here I am and you know, nothing but my boxers and my muck boots running out to the greenhouse, you know, like, only to find out that I did close it up anyway. But because we do it every single day, you know, you just don't remember. [00:53:50] Speaker D: Yeah, so, yeah, so you mentioned the amount of work and really it's physically taxing. Talk to us about health and what health means to you and how does growing your own food play in your idea of health? Like transition a little bit to healthy eating, the concept of being healthy to be self sufficient. Like, how important is health to you guys? [00:54:29] Speaker A: Well, I think that we've kind of been on a health journey ever since we started this and we've learned a lot all along the way, have thought we were, we were being healthy, we were eating healthy. But as we get more into figuring out what it really takes to be healthy, what food really is healthy to eat and that kind of thing, it's been kind of, it's, it's kind of evolved over, over the years and I think we just continue on the journey, you know, and eating Fewer and fewer things, but still relying on what we can grow and raise. [00:55:12] Speaker B: So we. I mean, we eat very similar to you guys, where, you know, we. Keto or low. [00:55:16] Speaker A: Low carb. [00:55:17] Speaker B: We don't really do keto. We do low carb. [00:55:19] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:55:19] Speaker B: You know, we have done keto, but it's a lot more work. [00:55:23] Speaker D: We find ourselves most days being low carb. [00:55:26] Speaker B: Right. [00:55:26] Speaker D: We try to. When we. When we think about it, we sure venture over into a ketogenic state. We're always in a low level of ketosis. [00:55:38] Speaker B: Probably where we are. [00:55:39] Speaker C: Standard American diet. [00:55:40] Speaker A: Yes. [00:55:40] Speaker B: Yes. [00:55:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:55:41] Speaker A: But not right away. You know, I mean, we thought that as long as you were cooking from scratch at home, that that is healthy. And while that is better than buying those things from the grocery store, over time we realized even in our weight, you know, we were still struggling to keep our weight down and things like that. [00:56:07] Speaker B: Homemade. Homemade white bread is not really any better for you. It might be. [00:56:12] Speaker A: There are less fillers in it, less ingredients and stuff. [00:56:16] Speaker B: From a biological standpoint, I don't think it's any better for you than white bread from the store. [00:56:20] Speaker D: Your body still sees it as sugar. [00:56:22] Speaker B: Right, Right. So all the years that I was making this amazing homemade white bread, which I would still love to be eating. [00:56:30] Speaker D: Right. [00:56:30] Speaker B: I now realize that that just wasn't. Even though it was. Even though it was homemade, doesn't make it healthy. [00:56:37] Speaker C: So you grow the majority of your protein or all, would you say? Majority. Okay, so the majority or all. [00:56:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we do make choices sometimes out of taste and convenience, occasionally to pick up some brats or something from the store, you know, or a rotisserie chicken. [00:56:57] Speaker B: Like, right now we're about to take a pig into the butcher next month. Well, we're out of our brats from last year, so. Yes, we've bought some brats. You know what I mean? So we do occasionally buy some meat, but we do raise everything we need. [00:57:13] Speaker A: Yes. [00:57:14] Speaker C: Yeah. How does your particular diet, you guys eat like we do? How does it affect what you grow as far as garden is concerned? Did it change what you're growing? [00:57:26] Speaker A: For sure, yeah. [00:57:27] Speaker B: We gave up mostly good stuff. [00:57:29] Speaker C: Right. I feel that. [00:57:31] Speaker B: Watermelon, sweet potatoes, sweet corn, potatoes, cantaloupe. [00:57:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:57:39] Speaker B: But green beans, man, they're so good. Yeah. [00:57:43] Speaker D: Love that. Broccoli. [00:57:45] Speaker A: Every day. [00:57:46] Speaker C: They all. How much cauliflower. [00:57:50] Speaker A: Oh, I know. And in what form? [00:57:53] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:57:55] Speaker C: But it did affect it. [00:57:56] Speaker A: It did. For sure. It did. [00:57:58] Speaker B: Yeah. We make different choices. For sure. [00:58:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:02] Speaker B: Like, I mean, all the things I just Listed we used to grow. You know what I mean? You know, I love sweet corn, I love watermelon. But you know, I love being alive. [00:58:14] Speaker A: Right. [00:58:14] Speaker B: More, you know, I mean, I love being not diabetic more than I love watermelon. [00:58:20] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:58:20] Speaker B: You know what I mean? So just choices you make as a grownup, have you, you know, have you. [00:58:26] Speaker D: Found as you've transitioned this, Are you more healthy? [00:58:32] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So blood work wise, we're more healthy. I've had, so I have psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Those are probably 95% gone. I've struggled with those since I was 15 years old. So 30 plus years. And they're, I mean, so through diet. [00:58:51] Speaker C: You'Re controlling those for sure. [00:58:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:58:55] Speaker B: I think, I think what it has been all along that I've never realized is a wheat allergy. Now I don't think it's a gluten, like, I don't think it's a gluten thing. I think it's an actual wheat allergy. And, and it makes sense. So like I mainly get psoriasis on my hands and I remember years ago making bread when I would work with dough, my hands would get super itchy. [00:59:24] Speaker D: Wow. [00:59:24] Speaker B: But I never put two and two together. I just thought, oh, well, it's, it's irritating my hands because my hands get irritated by everything. Right. But now every once in a while, if we do have a cheat day and we have something with wheat, I'll start to get a flare up. [00:59:41] Speaker D: Well. [00:59:42] Speaker C: Oh, wow. [00:59:43] Speaker B: Yep. And so I really do think, I think what I was experiencing externally from, from handling wheat and flour was probably also happening internally. All that inflammation, all that. Because there were times when like I could barely get out of bed in the morning. Like I'd have to sit on the edge of the bed and like stretch to like even like stand up straight from the arthritis. [01:00:09] Speaker A: And now, now you jump out of bed, everything's calm. [01:00:15] Speaker C: Your inflammatory. [01:00:17] Speaker B: Yes. Situation is bend down and tie my shoes. That's good, you know. [01:00:20] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [01:00:22] Speaker C: Which there were times probably that was different. [01:00:24] Speaker B: I've also lost £30, so I mean. [01:00:27] Speaker C: Right. [01:00:27] Speaker B: That helps quite a bit. [01:00:29] Speaker D: That's awesome. [01:00:29] Speaker B: You know? [01:00:31] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Especially in this lifestyle because it's physical and if you're not fit, you're just gonna. And you want, or if you want to come over into growing your own stuff, being self reliant. You have to be able to motivate yourself about your property. And it. Things are heavy and it's hard work and motivate. [01:00:52] Speaker D: You're not talking about a desire to do something. You're talking move yourself, move literally physically move yourself around. [01:00:59] Speaker C: Physical labor. 5 gallon buckets full are heavy. [01:01:03] Speaker A: Yes. [01:01:03] Speaker C: They really are. And we call it farmer fit around here. [01:01:08] Speaker B: Right. [01:01:08] Speaker C: And everyone around here is fairly fit because. [01:01:13] Speaker B: Right. [01:01:14] Speaker D: Five gallon buckets. [01:01:15] Speaker C: Five gallon buckets are heavy. And a farm can't afford or a homestead can't afford for you to not be able to do the hard labor, do the hard work. I'm down right now with a knee injury and I almost, I'm working out. I kind of dread the day that I got to pick up five gallon buckets again because I know how heavy they're going to be because you're not in practice and so highly recommend for people who are wanting to live the homestead lifestyle. Think they want to get out of the city and start farming to consider your diet, consider what you're eating. [01:01:57] Speaker D: Yeah. Consider health. [01:01:58] Speaker C: Consider health. [01:01:59] Speaker B: Right. This whole lifestyle is going to be easier if you're healthy. [01:02:03] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:02:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:04] Speaker B: From, from, I mean the physical standpoint, from a monetary standpoint. I mean you know this. Yeah. When you're, especially if you're doing this full time and you're self employed, like health insurance, all this stuff is expensive. If you're also then on a lot of medication, there's something you got to keep in mind. So the healthier you can be and the healthier you can stay. [01:02:30] Speaker C: Yep. [01:02:31] Speaker B: Makes a big difference. [01:02:32] Speaker D: Yeah. For sure. [01:02:34] Speaker C: Yeah. So you said self employed and you guys came out of that the 9 to 5 we were just talking about a minute ago coming out of the nine to five which sometimes it just seems easier. Like just man, just go get a 9 to 5. Get your weekends back and your evenings back and all of that. [01:02:53] Speaker B: We threaten it from. [01:02:56] Speaker C: But you have to be there. You have to show up. When they say show up, you don't get to decide what you do outside of that. You are relegated to what your employer says. And whatever your job of choice happens to be, it just doesn't bring freedom. It really doesn't. You know, woohoo on the weekends. But do you, can you remember what it was like that first day when you guys woke up and you worked for yourselves? And the feeling that. Do you have actual feelings about that day? [01:03:33] Speaker A: Absolutely. [01:03:34] Speaker B: It's getting hard. [01:03:34] Speaker A: First day after we quit our jobs. [01:03:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Well yeah. [01:03:39] Speaker A: That was awesome. [01:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah. We actually. So we both worked for the same company and we both quit our jobs not only on the same day but at the same time. So like we worked for the same company but we had different bosses and I worked on one floor and Sarah worked on another floor. [01:03:56] Speaker A: But we knew we had to do it at the same time because word. [01:03:58] Speaker B: Was going to travel fast. So, like texted each other, we're like, let's do it. And I went into my boss and she went into her boss. We both put in our notices. And I mean, you know, we had what people would consider, you know, good, good jobs. I mean, we, we did very well in business. And so it was a, it was big. Like, this isn't just like one of us. We're not just giving up like one income here. We're like, this is it. Like, we're all in. [01:04:25] Speaker A: Like, it was awesome, but it was really scary, right? Also the unknown, because we were leaving two really great paying jobs and we basically had decided that we were just going to. We were going to be poor. I mean, like, really poor. I mean, we were ready, we were so ready to get out of corporate America that we were okay with being really poor. Like, we stocked up on like VHS tapes for the kids to watch because we weren't going to get cable. And we knew we'd be in the country. [01:05:04] Speaker B: And so for like six months before we left our jobs, like we were, while we still had a good income coming in. So one thing we didn't touch on is like, we had worked for years prior to this to become debt free. So, like, we had everything paid off except we still had a little bit on our mortgage that we were very close to paying off, but we ended up just paying that off when we sold the place. But other than that, we were 100% debt free. So we were putting everything we were making while we still had jobs. We were putting everything. Like, I was buying all the, like, tools that I would need, like chainsaws, woodworking equipment, like, everything we could think of that, like, we even thought we might need. Like, we're just buying it now. We just stored it, never even opened it. You know what I mean? And we were just like, because, because we were, we were ready to be. Like, we made like, I hope this shop vac holds up because I might still need it when I'm 80 because I may not be able to afford another one ever. [01:06:03] Speaker D: Right? [01:06:03] Speaker B: You know what I mean? Like, that was the mindset we were in. [01:06:05] Speaker C: We were like, so what are some of the sacrifices? Like, what, what was the most like, oh, we're poor now. What was that moment you were like, well, was it after, after you got out of corporate America, you move out here and you're and what was there, that moment where you're like, oh, no. Okay. We got this, though. [01:06:30] Speaker A: Not really, because we're such big planners. You know, it was really a mindset shift for us to be, you know, like, to live like no one else. So you can live like. [01:06:41] Speaker B: Right. So we followed Dave Ramsey to become debt free. And that's what it was like. Live like no one else now. So later on you can live like no one else. [01:06:48] Speaker A: So before we left, it's not like we left and had $0. We planned a budget for the first two years that we were going to be out here. We help me out. [01:07:02] Speaker B: Well, so we plan to be like, we were okay with being poor. We never really were, let's just put it that way. So we. Because we've sold our place in Phoenix that we barely had a mortgage on, we were able to make a good amount of money. So when we moved to the Ozarks, now it's changed a little bit in the almost 10 years we've been out here. But when we moved out here, I mean, you could buy a decent homesteading property for under $100,000. So we sold our place in Phoenix, walked away with all that profit, came out here, and we had enough money to buy a place, buy a tractor, buy all the stuff that we needed, cash, plus have two years of living expenses set aside. So we were like, we've got two years, two years to make it before. Like we can. [01:07:48] Speaker A: But our budget was like next to nothing for that. Two years later, hardly anything at all. Right. [01:07:53] Speaker B: So we had two years to make it, and then we were out of money. [01:07:57] Speaker C: Now you say make it. Can you elaborate on what? [01:07:59] Speaker B: Well, make enough to survive. Okay, Right. [01:08:02] Speaker A: Basically make enough. Make the same amount as we were allowing ourselves on a monthly basis, which. [01:08:07] Speaker B: Was not very much, $25,000 a year, I think, is what we'd set aside. We're like. [01:08:13] Speaker A: But that was for two years to figure out a way to get business expenses. [01:08:16] Speaker B: Right. So we have two years to figure out how we can make $25,000 a year. And when we. We were on month, like 20, 20, 21, something like that, and we were like, nowhere near making what we needed to make. And that's when we started doing YouTube. [01:08:40] Speaker A: Well, we started before. [01:08:41] Speaker B: No, we started YouTube prior to that. But when we got it was like month 22 or 23, that all of a sudden we were able to start making money on YouTube and it made up almost to the dollar, the gap that we needed. [01:08:55] Speaker D: That's amazing. [01:08:55] Speaker B: Like, almost at exactly the two year mark. [01:08:59] Speaker A: Yes. [01:08:59] Speaker B: Right. See, so it was pretty amazing. [01:09:03] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:09:03] Speaker B: It was like. We still think back on that and are like, what? [01:09:07] Speaker D: That's cool. [01:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's excellent. [01:09:11] Speaker D: So what were some of the things that you went through to make money like as a homesteader? [01:09:19] Speaker A: We. We could write a book. [01:09:21] Speaker D: I know you did. [01:09:21] Speaker A: Plants Start Ways to make money on a homestead. [01:09:24] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:09:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we'll pick a couple. [01:09:27] Speaker D: I mean. Yeah, not all of them. [01:09:30] Speaker A: You know, the standard stuff. We sold eggs, I made soap. We sold a lot of things. We sold a lot of things at the farmers market. And for many years, probably five years, we were there every single Saturday. [01:09:41] Speaker B: Right. [01:09:42] Speaker A: Selling whatever we could find and make and produce. [01:09:45] Speaker B: Produce. We sold animals, we sold rabbit manure. [01:09:51] Speaker A: Plant starts, produce anything. Bird feed. I mean, you were making bird feeders. Right. [01:09:59] Speaker D: But do you think. [01:10:01] Speaker B: And we sold stuff on Etsy, you know, that we would make. [01:10:04] Speaker D: And so do you think it's possible to make it like the people who set out to say I'm homesteading only. Is it even a possibility? [01:10:17] Speaker B: I would say it's tough. Again, it depends on how you're willing to live and how important it is to you, if you're truly motivated. Do I think there's ways? Yes. Could we, like. We could do it. We could do it now, see, and this is where it's kind of like a catch 22, right? Because it's like we could do it now because we've got eight years in, we've got all the stuff, right? [01:10:46] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:10:47] Speaker B: We've got the tractor, we've got the. We've got. All this stuff is expensive. So, you know, and we don't have debt. So we could do it. Yes, because now, especially with cattle, we make enough on cattle that that makes up a decent amount of income. Could you do it if you have a mortgage, if you have no equipment and you only have a few acres of land where you know you're going to try to do it. Selling eggs and chickens and rabbits. I hate to say no, but I really don't think so. You would need to find some other way. An online business, you know. You know, for us YouTubers turned into a business. [01:11:31] Speaker D: Right. [01:11:31] Speaker B: You know, and that has provided us a way to then be able to do all of the other things that we want to do. Now. We do still make money farming, but YouTube is our main business and we treat it that way. [01:11:43] Speaker C: Was it part of Your original plan? YouTube? [01:11:46] Speaker A: No, it wasn't. They were. We had a. We had a business plan when we moved out here that included a blog selling things on Etsy and selling livestock, right? Yeah, yeah. And. [01:12:01] Speaker B: And selling at the farmer's market. [01:12:02] Speaker A: Yes, yeah, selling at the farmer's market. And YouTube just kind of morphed from documenting what we were doing so that our family, who thought we were absolutely crazy, could see what we were doing. And then over time, well, the blog was. I was. I found out quickly that it's very hard to really make a living on a. On a blog. It takes a lot of years before you start making any money. And while I enjoyed writing, I do like writing. And while I enjoyed that, I knew we found out quickly it wasn't really going to make us any money. And we. We ourselves started watching quite a bit of YouTube. You know, we were watching other homesteaders also. And when we found out that you could actually make money on YouTube by putting out videos, we decided we were going to learn everything we possibly could about posting videos and making money on YouTube. And we learned how to YouTube from watching YouTube. [01:13:06] Speaker B: Right. [01:13:07] Speaker A: And it just kind of took off over time. We got some advice from some other YouTubers to just start posting. Just post often and post on a schedule. [01:13:21] Speaker B: It was a different time, though, too. Like, it is a saturated kind of market now, you know, but it's. It's still a viable option for a lot of people, I think. You know, but. But even if you're not comfortable doing something like YouTube, I mean, just finding some online business, whether it's, you know, selling things on Etsy or whatever, like, you know, when you. When we live in a world now where your local market can be huge, right? Like, you know, you can make something in your garage and sell it to someone across the country in a way that you never could 30 years ago. [01:14:00] Speaker D: Yeah, right. [01:14:00] Speaker B: So I think in that regards, if you've got a skill that you can do something like that, you know, or you're, you know, if you're even a web developer, whatever, like, you can work from home. I mean. Yeah, that's an ideal situation. [01:14:14] Speaker D: We've had people chatting with us about things like, I think I'm going to homestead. And we'll be able to support ourselves because we're going to have chickens and gather eggs, and we're like, oh, no. Oh, no. [01:14:29] Speaker B: Right. [01:14:30] Speaker D: No, right. You know, like, the scale. If you want to support yourself with eggs, the scale that you're talking about is thousands. Thousands. [01:14:41] Speaker A: We played those. We ran those numbers ourselves before we even left. You know, selling eggs is not going to be the way that we're going to support our family. You know, we ran those numbers and we're like, no way. You know, and so we had to start thinking, thinking of ways to make more money at once, you know, and while we were developing our YouTube business, I mean, we were also selling other things and making money other ways. [01:15:13] Speaker B: And we still do. [01:15:13] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [01:15:14] Speaker B: I mean, we still don't put all of our eggs in the YouTube basket. I mean, like, that's. [01:15:19] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:15:19] Speaker A: You know, I mean, there, there are ways to make some decent dollars and you just have to be smart about it. And you need, you need to really investigate. You know, if you raise, buy and raise registered breeder quality animals, you can sell those and make some pretty good profit. I mean, that's. And if you look into the different breeds of things, if you want to get into animal husbandry, you know, what are the hot breeds for the market right now? You know? You know, Idaho pasture pigs were a good money maker for us. You know, we could sell breeders for 350 to $450 each and even their piglets just for meat. Here in this area, you could pick up piglets for $20 a piglet. But the IPPS were selling for $100 each. [01:16:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:10] Speaker A: You know, so if you think through some of those things, make wise decisions. Absolutely, absolutely. Really investigate things. [01:16:18] Speaker B: Right. [01:16:19] Speaker A: So finding out where the money is in a certain area. We found out in the Phoenix area that we could sell live ducks for more than we could sell butchered ducks. [01:16:32] Speaker B: Right. You know, when we were still at our urban homestead, one of the things that we sold was ducks. And we actually had a restaurant that wanted to start buying duck meat from us. So we were going to start processing ducks and selling them, which first of all is a nightmare. [01:16:46] Speaker D: Right. [01:16:46] Speaker B: And so we ended up kind of backing off from that. And then we had some, an Asian person contact us and ask if we would sell live ducks. And they wanted to buy them for more than what we were selling fully processed ducks for. Because they want the blood and they. [01:17:04] Speaker A: Want all the beak, they want the tongue, they want. [01:17:08] Speaker B: They eat all parts of the duck. [01:17:09] Speaker D: Right. [01:17:10] Speaker B: So they, they would come and they'd buy them. They'd actually, some of them would butcher them. Right. They would like butcher them like in. [01:17:18] Speaker D: Our driveway the way they wanted it. [01:17:21] Speaker B: But we sold, you know, we probably made $10 a duck more selling it live than we were selling it butchered with none of the work. [01:17:29] Speaker A: Right. [01:17:29] Speaker B: So, like, look into different markets like that. No, that's not going to happen out here. [01:17:34] Speaker D: Right. [01:17:35] Speaker B: You know, because it's just a different market. [01:17:36] Speaker A: Sure, Right. [01:17:37] Speaker B: You know, we could also sell duck eggs. You know, 10 years ago, we were selling duck eggs for $8 a dozen in Phoenix. You know, out here, eggs are selling. [01:17:46] Speaker A: For $2 a dozen, and I don't want duck eggs. They. They don't even think that surprised us. [01:17:52] Speaker D: We were. We were planning on selling duck eggs. That was one of the things we. We had ducks. [01:17:57] Speaker B: Right. [01:17:57] Speaker D: And we were. Had the duck eggs, and we're like, oh, man, this is gonna be. This is gonna be amazing. Right. You know, because we love duck eggs. [01:18:06] Speaker A: Yeah, right. [01:18:07] Speaker C: And back where we were living, duck eggs were selling for like, a dollar each. [01:18:11] Speaker A: Yeah, right. [01:18:11] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, yeah. [01:18:13] Speaker C: Or more. [01:18:13] Speaker D: Or more. [01:18:14] Speaker B: Right. [01:18:14] Speaker D: And so we're like, man, this is going to be great. Bring the duck eggs with us to the market. And we would bring them home from the market. You know, like, nobody bought the duck. [01:18:25] Speaker B: Eggs because here people are like, you eat a duck egg. [01:18:29] Speaker D: We could sell. We could sell goose eggs for sure more readily than we could sell the duck eggs. [01:18:34] Speaker B: More of a novel. [01:18:35] Speaker D: It was a novelty thing. I can't tell you how many people were like, I want that. [01:18:40] Speaker B: Right. [01:18:42] Speaker A: We actually had somebody ask us a funny question. We had a sign. We were selling at the square when we had a license to sell just at the square, not at a. At the farmer's market. And we had a sign up that we were selling chicken eggs. And somebody came by and they were very confused about our sign. [01:19:03] Speaker B: They, like, laughed. They were like. [01:19:06] Speaker A: And I was like, I don't understand. She's like, well, all eggs are chicken eggs. [01:19:10] Speaker B: Like, what other kind of eggs are there? [01:19:11] Speaker C: Funny. [01:19:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. I remember that. She's kind of like, laughing at our sign. [01:19:18] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:19:19] Speaker B: And we were like. She's like, well, what? Like, basically, what else would they be? Of course they're chicken eggs. [01:19:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:25] Speaker D: Well, actually, my favorite so far has been guinea eggs. [01:19:28] Speaker A: Oh, really? [01:19:29] Speaker B: They're really good. [01:19:31] Speaker D: They're great. [01:19:32] Speaker C: Oh, they're really delicious. [01:19:33] Speaker D: They're almost like a more concentrated duck egg. [01:19:37] Speaker A: Really? [01:19:37] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:19:38] Speaker A: I'm not sure if ours lived long enough to lay eggs. [01:19:42] Speaker B: I don't know. [01:19:43] Speaker D: They. Now they're not good enough to continue to have guinea. Don't get me wrong. They're not that good. [01:19:48] Speaker C: And they're roaming around because, you know, they were for our ticks on our. [01:19:53] Speaker A: Sure. [01:19:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:55] Speaker C: So funny. But. And they would lay eggs, but they would go hide them. [01:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:00] Speaker C: So. [01:20:01] Speaker A: And they're terrible mamas, you know, they're terrible. [01:20:04] Speaker C: They would just make nests and they would lay a hundred of them in the nest and you would find them, you know, some amount of time later. And of course, they're all bad. [01:20:12] Speaker B: That's the scary part. [01:20:13] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, the ones that we ate, we knew had been laid like in a nest in a shaw or something. [01:20:19] Speaker D: Yeah. For a while we had them trained to go into a chickshaw. [01:20:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:23] Speaker D: And so they would go in the chickshaw and they laid eggs in the chickshaws and. [01:20:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:27] Speaker C: But once they started free ranging, that was over. Over. Wow. [01:20:34] Speaker A: Oh. One surprise that we. We learned in the whole business, business area was about rabbits that we could sell. We could sell breeder rabbits way more than processed, but we could make so much money on rabbit manure, we could have just sold mountains and mountains and mountains of rabbit manure for way more than we could get for live rabbits as breeders or butchered rabbits for meat. [01:21:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. When we were raising a lot of rabbits, we were making equal to or more at times selling rabbit manure than we were selling rabbits. And the rabbit manure was. Was paying for all of our rabbit feed. [01:21:18] Speaker A: Oh, way more than that. [01:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:21:19] Speaker D: That's cool. [01:21:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's all about really kind of thinking outside of the box and really looking at the best product, end product from whatever it is that you're doing. [01:21:32] Speaker B: Right. [01:21:32] Speaker A: You know, we made way more money selling plant starts than we ever did selling produce. [01:21:40] Speaker B: Correct. [01:21:42] Speaker A: And it was a much smaller, big time frame. [01:21:45] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:21:45] Speaker B: Because you got to think, I mean, you think about like, so, like, one of the reasons eggs don't sell for a lot around here is because so many people have chickens. Right. Like nobody. Like, if you don't have your own chickens for eggs, one of your neighbors does, and they're just trying to give them away in the spring. Right. So, like. Right. So, like, if you take eggs to the market in the spring, you're not going to sell any or many because everybody's got eggs. Well, the same is true for tomatoes. The same is true for zucchini and all the other things that, like, everybody's getting them all at once. Yeah, right, right. So, like, when we switched over to selling plant starts, it was like there really wasn't anybody else doing that. [01:22:25] Speaker A: Right. [01:22:26] Speaker B: We were now the ones providing the one so that people could grow their own. [01:22:30] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:22:30] Speaker B: You know what I mean? So, yeah, that ended up being a much more profitable business venture than selling produce. [01:22:37] Speaker D: It seemed like at the farmers market, the. The really successful produce guys were the ones that had greenhouses and would have whatever it was first. [01:22:46] Speaker A: First. Absolutely. [01:22:47] Speaker B: Correct. Correct. You know, and that's the thing. If you can do something, oh, you've got tomatoes at a time or in a way that sets you apart. [01:22:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:22:58] Speaker B: Then. Yeah. [01:22:59] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:23:00] Speaker C: So whenever you guys moved here, transition just a little bit. Whenever you guys moved here, your girls were little and there were four of you at home. They were young. They weren't little little, but they were young. [01:23:10] Speaker B: Fifth grade and eighth grade. [01:23:11] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay, so they were young and now they're grown and you guys are, you know, new empty nesters. Ish. As you have gone through the years and your home, your homestead transitions and it swings and just with the seasons and with the years and now, as being, quote, empty nesters, where do you see your homestead? How do you see it swinging or transitioning? You're obviously very committed to growing your own food. But with just the two of you, how do you see it developing over the course of the next five to ten years? [01:23:54] Speaker A: Well, we don't have to grow so much, that's for sure. [01:23:58] Speaker D: Will you scale back? [01:23:59] Speaker A: I think we'll scale back on. [01:24:04] Speaker B: We have scale back the garden, some things, like we grow our gardens a little bit smaller. [01:24:10] Speaker A: That naturally happened, I think, when we moved to the raised beds. [01:24:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:14] Speaker A: You know, because you, you know, you really can't grow quite as much in a green, in a raised bed as you can in the ground. [01:24:24] Speaker B: Like, we used to always raise 50 meat chickens a year. Now we're raising 25. [01:24:27] Speaker A: Right. [01:24:28] Speaker B: Because that's all we need for the two of us now. We do, you know, we do like, we plan on raising some meat chickens for our daughter and her husband next year. You know, we have a deal with them, though, that they need to come help. Like, you know, we'll, we'll do the day to day stuff, but they need to come help on processing day. You know, I just shot a deer for them. It's deer season, so I just shot a deer for them. But they had to come over and help process it. You know what I mean? So that seems fair. Right? Absolutely. Right. And if that's not going to be part of the deal, then, yes, we're at a point in our lives where we're ready to scale back a little bit. [01:25:05] Speaker A: Right. So, yeah, I think in the areas where we are still making an income, it's not going to change. You know, in fact, maybe it will increase. You know, we're, we're really liking raising the beef cattle and our land can handle more and so we'll probably increase that. [01:25:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd like to add at least 10 more cows. [01:25:30] Speaker A: I think so. Yeah. But we don't need quite as much. And you know, I think we're open with the kids too. I would plant more if they would come and harvest it. You know, there really isn't a lot more upkeep to planting 10 tomato plants or 50. [01:25:50] Speaker B: I think they'll get there. [01:25:52] Speaker A: They will. They're still young, they're still. [01:25:54] Speaker B: Our daughter who's married, is a senior in College and is 21 years old. You know what I mean? Like think back to when we were 21, like right, this. Even though they grew up now doing this, they still want to go out and like do their own thing. So she's in school to be a teacher. She's going to student teach this year and hopefully be a full time teacher next year. [01:26:13] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:26:14] Speaker B: And then our youngest daughter who just started college, wants to be a nurse. So like, I think eventually they will understand why we wanted them to grow up in this lifestyle and they'll probably come back to it. But I also think they need to go out and like do their own. Do their own thing for a while. [01:26:31] Speaker D: Right? [01:26:32] Speaker A: Yeah, but we're ready to not have to do all of that work also. So it's not like we want to just continue doing that much work and then just. [01:26:41] Speaker C: No. [01:26:42] Speaker B: And we're ready to not be so busy. You know, when we have grandkids someday we want to have time to not be as busy even as we were with our own kids. You know, it was a huge blessing for us to be able to move out here and do this full time and spend every day with our kids. I mean like, even, like so many times I've thought to myself, even if it fails now, we would. All those years we got to have the. Have with the kids where we weren't, you know, when our kids were little, you know, we both worked full time jobs and like when the kids were real little, we purposely worked opposite shifts so we didn't have to spend so much on daycare. So like I would work, I work 2 to 10 normally, which ended up usually being like 2 to midnight. And Sarah worked, you know, normal 6 to 2. So she would. Or 8 to 5, she would drop the kids off at daycare. She would have to leave home at about 6 in the morning. She would drop them off at daycare when I got done. No, no, think about it. [01:27:48] Speaker A: They would be with you in the morning. [01:27:49] Speaker B: That's right. They would be with me in the. [01:27:51] Speaker A: Morning and I would pick them up. [01:27:52] Speaker B: I would drop them off at daycare and then she would pick them up afterwards. [01:27:54] Speaker A: So they were only in daycare from like 1:30 to 5:30. [01:27:58] Speaker B: Right. [01:27:58] Speaker A: You know, versus. [01:28:00] Speaker B: But, but they only ever saw one of us at a time. [01:28:03] Speaker A: Right. And you had off every Sunday and Monday, so we didn't even. We only had one day together as a family. We only had one day together as a married couple. [01:28:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:12] Speaker A: So it was hard. But that was a sacrifice that we wanted to make so that our kids weren't in daycare, you know, 10 hours a day. [01:28:19] Speaker D: Right. [01:28:20] Speaker A: You know, but then being able to. [01:28:21] Speaker B: Come out here and do this and have all that time with the kids was amazing. [01:28:25] Speaker A: And to be honest, the kids don't remember much outside of us here. [01:28:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is great. [01:28:31] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:28:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:28:32] Speaker A: You know, they, they don't remember much of daycare. They don't remember much of time without. [01:28:38] Speaker B: Us because there was a big portion of time while we were still. While we were still in Phoenix that I worked from home. [01:28:44] Speaker A: Right. [01:28:45] Speaker B: My job a lot. I was in sales and my job allowed me to work from home. So a lot of that runs together in their mind too, where I was there a lot. [01:28:53] Speaker C: Yeah. Wow. The being able to be a family like that. We're experiencing that after him retiring and there were times whenever he, he was so busy with his other, with his job, especially when we were overseas and he was still flying and there were times that he was so busy he wouldn't, he would. We had four kids and he, he wouldn't hardly know what grade they were in. [01:29:20] Speaker D: You know, for that three years that we were in England that particular span, I was not home for 18 months out of the 36 that we were there. So like it wasn't all at once, but two weeks there and six weeks there and six months there and you know, so like it was, it was a lot of not home. And when I was home, like literally without exaggeration, a 12 hour day was normal and a 16 hour day was not abnormal. So like even, even home, the amount of time spent at work was huge. So like I, we. I get that totally. Like. And there were times when it was. I'm not sure what grade she's in. [01:30:09] Speaker C: She's that tall. [01:30:10] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:30:12] Speaker B: Right. [01:30:12] Speaker C: That grade right there, you know, I. [01:30:14] Speaker B: Think that's my kid. [01:30:15] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:30:16] Speaker D: I knew I could pick them out, but they're in that grade and we. [01:30:20] Speaker C: All go through those seasons, you know, and sacrifices I did not work. I raised kids. And that was a sacrifice that we made income wise was we never had. We only ever had One income. And that allowed for some continuity because he was gone for half of the year or half of the three years. [01:30:41] Speaker B: How could you have worked when he. [01:30:42] Speaker C: Well, people do and they try, but it's a lot of daycare. [01:30:46] Speaker B: Right. [01:30:46] Speaker C: You know, it's a lot of daycare. [01:30:48] Speaker D: It's a lot of our friends that like we've. We have friends who were both active duty and typically they would hire an au pair, a live in nanny to help raise the children because they just. When both of military, when both of you are gone a lot, it's just they, the kids have to have something. [01:31:12] Speaker B: Right. [01:31:12] Speaker C: So now we have him home every day, all day. And Michaela has that opportunity. And a really cool blessing for us is we have Rebecca back. She kind of. We moved overseas or to somewhere where she wanted to stay back because she was a senior in high school and all that. And so we kind of lost her a little early, but we got her back and now she's here on the farm and he's getting a little. We're getting that time back with her, sort of redeeming time and then being able to be with Michaela essentially every day and farming together. [01:31:51] Speaker B: And she's having an entirely different childhood than 100% different. [01:31:55] Speaker D: Like it couldn't be more different. [01:31:58] Speaker B: Right, yeah. [01:31:58] Speaker D: Right. [01:31:59] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, he. We're a one income family with four kids versus a decent income family with one. You know, her experience is very different. [01:32:10] Speaker B: Right, well. [01:32:11] Speaker D: And the other kids moved all over the world. Yep. We lived in 21 different houses across a 25 year career. [01:32:20] Speaker C: We vacationed in Spain and Italy. [01:32:23] Speaker D: But I mean. [01:32:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I remember you telling me a story about one of your kids saying something about when are we going home? And they were talking about England. Yeah, that was like, oh, no, that. [01:32:32] Speaker D: Was Hannah at that point. She had lived in England for five. She, she had lived in what? How old was she? She was not 9, 10. [01:32:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:32:44] Speaker D: And she had lived in England for five years and we were at that point stationed in Korea and she was ready. She was ready to go home to England. Yeah. And that was a huge wake up call. I looked at her and I'm like, we have got to get these kids back to the United States. [01:33:01] Speaker B: Right. [01:33:01] Speaker D: You know, because it was. [01:33:02] Speaker B: They need to know where home is. [01:33:03] Speaker D: Yeah, they need to know where home is. Because we were on year four, I think of being overseas and when kids are that age, four years is a long time tapped their life. And, and two, two years prior to that, she was in England. You know, we were only Home for a short span. You know, we were in England home for three years, then in England for three years, then in Korea. And so she. She really felt like she needed to go home to England. And we're like, no, we. We got to go home. Right. Like, real home. [01:33:36] Speaker C: And ended up right outside of Montgo, Alabama, and we were home. Yeah, it was great. [01:33:42] Speaker D: That was our first foray into chickens, actually. [01:33:45] Speaker C: Yep. [01:33:45] Speaker D: I came home one day and there were chickens in my garage. And I was not happy. [01:33:54] Speaker C: No, he was not. He was not happy. [01:33:56] Speaker D: I was not happy. They had gone and gotten. Went to the local feed store, and, you know, it was spring chicken days or whatever. They had gone and bought chickens, and I was like, oh, my God, I cannot believe you did this. [01:34:09] Speaker C: At that point, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a homesteader. I wanted to have goats. This was in 2010. This was a. I was going, I just stay at home, mom. I want to homeschool my kids. I need everything right here, and I want some goats, and I can't have those. So I'm got some chickens. And we had a garden, and we grew our tomatoes in five gallon buckets in our suburban backyard. And we had four chickens and hot peppers and, like, all of the things. And this was in. That was really 2009. Nine is when that happened. [01:34:44] Speaker D: Turned out I loved the chickens. [01:34:45] Speaker C: He loved them. [01:34:46] Speaker D: I did. [01:34:47] Speaker B: That's probably right around the same time we got our first chickens. 2010, maybe. It took me a long time to. [01:34:55] Speaker A: Convince her in 2011, actually, like, to. [01:34:58] Speaker B: Get chickens, you could have done, like. [01:35:00] Speaker D: Shelly and just she could show them they were home. [01:35:02] Speaker A: We lived in an HOA neighborhood. [01:35:05] Speaker D: Yes. So did we. [01:35:06] Speaker A: I was like, we're gonna need. I'm. I am the rule follower. Okay. I was like the HR director. I wrote the rules. I enforced the rules. And now my husband wants chickens in the hoa. I'm like, we're gonna get in trouble. [01:35:18] Speaker C: Yeah. He felt the same way. [01:35:19] Speaker D: That's exactly how I felt. [01:35:21] Speaker C: One of our chickens was above Orpington. And if you've ever had them, you. [01:35:24] Speaker B: Know, that's actually what our first chickens were. [01:35:26] Speaker C: They're loud when they lay. They're the loudest cacklers when they lay. And we. I mean, we. Our backyard. Our backyard has swimming pool in it, too. You know, like, it was. [01:35:36] Speaker D: But it was a tiny backyard. [01:35:38] Speaker C: Yes. And right next. I mean, right behind us with just a wooden privacy fence was. Our neighbors were everywhere. [01:35:44] Speaker B: Right. [01:35:44] Speaker C: And these buff Orpingtons would just carry on. This one, she Would just carry on and he would lay there at it like, oh, my God, if that chicken doesn't hush, we are going to get in so much trouble. The neighbors are going to call and we're gonna. The police are gonna come. [01:36:01] Speaker D: I was pretty sure. I was pretty sure I was getting arrested. [01:36:04] Speaker A: I just knew it. [01:36:05] Speaker C: For having his chickens in suburbia, Prattville, Alabama. [01:36:11] Speaker A: I think we probably had the fattest buff Orpington hens, because Kevin, you know, would actually freak out a little bit how. How loud they were, and he would run out there and give them scratch to make them shut up. [01:36:23] Speaker C: Just ate themselves quiet. [01:36:25] Speaker D: Yeah, they can't cackle if they're eating, right? [01:36:29] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:36:32] Speaker A: But when we moved, see, we thought we were being really. We thought nobody knew. We thought we were being really stealth. And we even strategically planted bushes so that if the neighbors, like, looked. Peeked over our block wall, that they wouldn't be able to see the chicken coop and everything like that. But when we moved out, everybody was like, we're so sad you're moving. We were gonna miss the sound of your chickens back there. [01:36:58] Speaker B: They all knew. [01:36:59] Speaker A: Yeah, they all knew. [01:37:01] Speaker D: We had a neighbor in Maryland that said we got the same thing when we were leaving to come here, actually. She. She would sit on her porch and watch our chickens that we had when we were in Maryland. Yeah, we have had off camera, but we've had lots of conversations about local and food and such, as it feels at least like things might be shifting in the nation as far as food and health and maybe the big food and industry, even. There's a push, at least that's being talked about, towards regenerative agriculture, regeneratively raised animals, locally grown things. Is there any advice that you would provide to folks that might be, say, living in a city or even living in a small town, but they only have ever gone to the grocery store. Like, one of the hurdles that we had to overcome at the farmers market was we're selling meat at a farmer's market. Right. And that was. That was odd to people. So it. We had to, like, I don't know how many pounds of meat we gave away. Try this. And then they're like, oh, my God, that was the best whatever it was I've ever had in my life. And now we have a customer. But, like, we had to overcome that. That initial. There's just a weirdness to it. Like, could you provide thoughts or insights or, like, as folks want to shift more local, what would you say? [01:38:50] Speaker B: Well, I think finding a farmer's market, I Mean, and shopping there as much as possible is important, you mean? And then when you're there, like, don't just be a consumer. Like, talk to the farmers, get to know them, get to know what they're doing, how they're doing it, why they're doing it. I mean, most of us love to talk. We spend most our days alone on our farms not talking to people. When we go to the farmers market or something like that, we love to talk. And most of us do this because we're passionate about it. You know, we have a drive. This is way too much work to do if you're not driven to do it. [01:39:26] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:39:27] Speaker B: So we want to tell people why, why we do what we do, why we, you know, So I think that's where I would definitely start. I mean, yeah, you can go to health food stores and stuff like that, but it doesn't. You're not going to get the same interaction as you would go into a farmer's market. [01:39:45] Speaker A: I think also if people would start learning what is wrong with the food that is at the grocery store or at the restaurants and then learn what they want instead of that. It's a great jumping off point. It's a great way to get into finding better food or growing better food and locating that in your area. [01:40:12] Speaker D: With so much conflicting information out there, how do you find what's wrong with food? [01:40:26] Speaker A: That's a really great question. Because there is, there is so much, in my opinion, bad information right out there. I would say go to sources that you, that you trust that are telling the truth. You know, I think, well, people who. [01:40:45] Speaker B: Can give testimonials, right? Like, like I know now that low carb works because it worked for me, right? Like, like I'm. I don't even know if there's one. I don't know if there's one diet that's right for everybody, right? You might have to try. You know, some people might be able to handle some grains some people might be able to handle, you know, so you gotta, you've got to try those things. But like, some things are common sense, right? Like the big thing that's in the news now is like Froot Loops, right? Like, common sense tells you Fruit Loops aren't good for you, right? [01:41:21] Speaker A: Don't just turn over the box and look at the ingredients. And if you start digging into what those ingredients are, if you take responsibility to look up those ingredients and figure out what this actually is, when you realize that most of those things are just plain old chemicals, they are, they're A sorry excuse for a food product. [01:41:45] Speaker B: Right. [01:41:45] Speaker A: And when you start doing that and realize what you're actually putting in your mouth and putting in your body, then you have the knowledge to make that change or to make a decision, like, I'm not putting those chemicals into my body. [01:41:58] Speaker B: In most cases, those aren't food products. Like, if you were to take those individual ingredients by themselves, they would not be food. [01:42:04] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:42:05] Speaker B: So, like, you know, when you're looking at a label, if you can, if it's made with foods, it's probably fine. Right. I mean, even if you're not doing low carb. Right. But, like, if it's actually made with foods, great, eat that. If it's not, probably don't eat that. Right. Like, don't eat stuff that's not food. Like, that's just. Right. Like that's a good place to start at least. Right? [01:42:31] Speaker D: That is a good place to start. Yeah. And to me, even learning a little bit of the history, like we're. We're sold vegetable oil as food, but I think it's an industrial solvent or industrial lubricant. [01:42:45] Speaker B: Right. [01:42:45] Speaker D: You know, that, that they've cleansed through tons of chemical processes and then sold as food, you know, but, like, I don't think that's food, you know? [01:42:55] Speaker B: Right. [01:42:56] Speaker D: So I think, I think that is important also. [01:42:59] Speaker C: I hope that as a nation you were talking about maybe the climate is going to change. Well, it's going to change, but perhaps we. We see a shift in our food, the emphasis on foods. [01:43:14] Speaker B: Right. [01:43:14] Speaker C: On the foodstuffs in the food industry that we have going on. [01:43:18] Speaker B: Right. [01:43:19] Speaker C: I hope that we're getting back to food being important, because as farmers and as homesteaders, the reason we get up every single day, every single day is because of food. [01:43:34] Speaker A: Right? [01:43:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Whereas 95% of what we do in some way revolves around food. [01:43:41] Speaker D: Absolutely. [01:43:42] Speaker B: Maybe 100% of what we do revolves around food in some way. Producing it, eating it. [01:43:49] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:43:50] Speaker B: I mean, preserving it. Right. [01:43:52] Speaker A: Growing the food that the food's going to eat. [01:43:54] Speaker C: Growing the food that the food's going to eat. [01:43:56] Speaker B: Right. [01:43:57] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And. But for most Americans right now who are working the 9 to 5, who are doing the best that they can to just get on with it, food, everything they do isn't around food. And they go and they just get something, they put it in the grocery basket and they go home and they heat it up and crash in the bed. [01:44:22] Speaker B: Right. [01:44:23] Speaker C: And I hope my prayer is that as things, as the emphasis changes, maybe, and start swinging with some of the people that are, you know, going to be in leadership soon. Maybe we can get back to food mattering. Real food, though, real. I used to tell my kids who are like, mom, what should we eat? You know, diet wise and being healthy and all that. And I just try to tell them, you know, if it is what it always was, it's probably okay. [01:44:51] Speaker A: Mm. [01:44:52] Speaker B: Right? [01:44:52] Speaker C: You know, keto or low carb or carnivore or whatever. Like, dude, okay, we eat a low carb keto diet. We don't eat potatoes anymore, but for crying out loud, like, if you could just come away from the ultra processed right stuff for sure and the chemicals. Eat the potato, right? Like, I don't care if you eat the potato with real butter on it, right? [01:45:16] Speaker B: Eat the potato, not the potato chip, right? [01:45:18] Speaker C: Like, if we could just come away as a nation and stop with the ultra processed foods or processed, like, eat minimally processed food, eat real meat and real things that were grown in the real ground. And if we could get back to a place of understanding where food really comes from. And as homesteaders, I mean that and farmers, that's just what we do. And I think there might be not really a misconception, but maybe not quite getting it. People, they might be sitting in their suburban home and they think, oh, man, I just want to do that. But, like, do you understand everything that you're doing is actually revolving around your food and not just, I want to sit on the porch and drink coffee and not live in the suburbs anymore. Like, it's really hard work. Food is neither cheap nor is it easy, right? And Americans, by and large have been led to believe that they are cheap and that it is easy. And those two things have led us down the path of the majority of this nation is very sick, right? [01:46:31] Speaker B: And, well, one thing I was saying to Sarah the other day, because initially, like, my initial response, hearing of like, some of these new people that are coming in to change things, I was like, I hope they just. I hope that a lot of the stuff just disappears. Like, I hope they just take the Froot Loops off the shelves. Then I thought, you know what? That's not the right approach. Like, what we need to be doing is we need, like, because the same people who got us, got people addicted to cigarettes are now getting people addicted. Let's treat it the same way. Let's put a big fat warning on the box of Froot Loops so that when people pick it up in the store, they read, oh, causes, causes type 2 diabetes, causes obesity, causes heart disease, causes, like all the Things that like, just like smoking cigarettes. And we were. I mean, I mean, I know there's still a lot of people that smoke, but there's a lot of people who gave up smoking a lot less because of the warnings, like, let's do the same on food. Yeah, right. [01:47:25] Speaker A: Well, and the education, too. People just don't know whether they're putting blinders on or not. People just don't know. And if we can just educate them, use the airspace, the time and, you know, the TV commercial time to start educating people in the way to that they can make healthier choices. [01:47:49] Speaker B: If something needs a marketing campaign to sell it, it probably isn't food. It probably isn't good food. Right. Like, you never see a TV commercial for an apple. Right, Right. Because you don't really need to convince people an apple is good for you. It's an apple, it's good for you. [01:48:05] Speaker C: It doesn't have nutrition facts on it either. [01:48:07] Speaker B: Right. [01:48:09] Speaker C: You don't nutrition facts on broccoli. [01:48:11] Speaker A: Right. [01:48:11] Speaker C: It doesn't need it. [01:48:12] Speaker B: Right, Right. [01:48:13] Speaker A: No, but we can stop putting Trix commercials during cartoons for little kids that, you know, they want all of the junk food and things like that. You know, what you can't do is you can't advertise cigarettes on TV anymore. [01:48:28] Speaker C: No, you can't. [01:48:28] Speaker D: That's right. [01:48:29] Speaker A: You know, changes like that can be made to make the terrible food not so in your. [01:48:37] Speaker C: In your face. Just in your face. [01:48:39] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. [01:48:43] Speaker C: If we can. If we could get people back to eating food that's real food, the. That the nation is going to get healthier. [01:48:51] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. [01:48:52] Speaker B: And if people start to make those decisions, the companies will change. [01:48:55] Speaker D: Right. [01:48:55] Speaker A: It's not like they can't make those changes. Most of the companies are already doing those changes for other countries around the world. There are countries around the world where say they say, no, you're not using canola oil. You need to use tallow to fry your fries in. [01:49:13] Speaker D: Right. [01:49:13] Speaker A: You know, a lot of companies already have two different standards for the same food. Fruit Loops for the US And Froot Loops for Canada. And the ingredients list is completely different. [01:49:25] Speaker B: Right. [01:49:26] Speaker D: Which is crazy. [01:49:28] Speaker C: It's insane. [01:49:29] Speaker B: Right. It makes you feel like we're in a science experiment. [01:49:34] Speaker C: Well, we choose to opt out. [01:49:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. [01:49:37] Speaker C: As have you. I've chosen to opt out. [01:49:40] Speaker B: Well, and everybody has that option to some degree. [01:49:43] Speaker A: Yes. [01:49:44] Speaker B: Well, you do. Everybody has that option to, to make different choices for sure. And if everybody started making different choices, I mean, you know, the big bad companies that are in it for profit, well, they're in it for profit. [01:50:00] Speaker D: Right. [01:50:01] Speaker B: So if suddenly something isn't making them a profit anymore, they're going to find what would make them a profit and they're going to. You know, I'm still a big fan of capitalism. I think it's the best system in the world. [01:50:14] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:50:15] Speaker B: You know, but as consumers, we control a lot of that. We vote for a lot more than we think we do. [01:50:24] Speaker D: We've said on many, many podcasts in a call to action, the call to action has been vote with your dollars. Because where you spend your money actually can make changes for sure. Because at least now it's still a capitalist society where money, you know, money talks, money speaks, it talks. The changes will happen. [01:50:48] Speaker B: Right. [01:50:52] Speaker C: I'm excited. Yeah. [01:50:54] Speaker D: Is there a. Can you think of, like, could you name a biggest food myth that Americans believe? Maybe. [01:51:05] Speaker B: I think for us, probably the biggest myth we had to overcome was that everything homemade is good. Like, everything homemade is healthy. Not really. You know. Right. You know, homemade cookies are good. Homemade cookies are not healthy. You know what I mean? Homemade white bread is good. It's not healthy. So I think you do, you do need to know, even when you're cooking at home, you need to know the basics of nutrition. [01:51:42] Speaker D: How. Random question. But like, how, how do we get that? How do you, how do you, how did you get that? Like, our doctors, we know, like, we could put the exact stats up, but like there's only 5 or 10% that get any nutrition education at all. And then it's less than three hours typically in their entire medical schooling. Like, where, where do you go to get nutrition advice or learning? [01:52:18] Speaker B: I mean, now YouTube mostly. I mean YouTube or I mean, other online resources. [01:52:24] Speaker D: Who are your, who are your go to YouTubers for nutrition? [01:52:29] Speaker A: Well, these days we're taking most advice from Casey Means. [01:52:35] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:52:36] Speaker A: And I like Dr. Eric Westman. [01:52:40] Speaker B: I think he does a lot of, like, where he reacts to other videos. So he'll watch like vegan videos and stuff and then like break it down, you know, and he's, he's a guy who, you know, he's got 30 years of clinical. He runs a weight loss section of a hospital. So he has a ton of actual hands on experience with patients and he does it all through low carb, you know, and he literally, he said, you know, he has made people's diabetes go away in three days. People have been diabetic for years and he could reverse their diabetes in three days. [01:53:20] Speaker D: Yeah. You know, that reminds me of the story of a friend at church that said she had been taking diabetes medicine for decades and started a low carb diet. And her doctor said, well, if you're going to do that, we can take you off the medicines. And she's like, just stop taking it. [01:53:41] Speaker A: He said, right. [01:53:42] Speaker D: I've been on these medicines for literally decades. [01:53:45] Speaker B: Right. And nobody's ever told her that before. [01:53:48] Speaker D: Right. [01:53:50] Speaker C: Well, if that's how you're going to eat, you don't need this meds. [01:53:54] Speaker B: Right? [01:53:54] Speaker D: What? [01:53:56] Speaker B: Right. [01:53:59] Speaker D: Yeah. Brain exploding emoji. Yeah. [01:54:02] Speaker B: Right. Like wow. Yeah. [01:54:07] Speaker D: Do you have any others? [01:54:08] Speaker A: It is difficult right now to get solid information. [01:54:13] Speaker B: Sure. [01:54:14] Speaker A: I mean the nutritionists are misinformed. You know, it's not an easy time right now to figure out the truth about health. True. But you know, about your health, certainly about health and nutrition and you know, it's unfortunate that we've been misinformed for. [01:54:39] Speaker C: So long our entire, our entire lives. [01:54:42] Speaker A: Right. And because of that, people are so resistant to new and different information. So resistant. So while I. [01:54:52] Speaker B: Especially when It's a complete 180 paradigm shift. Yeah, right. Like full paradigm. When it goes from like animal products are going to kill you to know. Actually it's just the opposite. That's a huge like, well, the food. [01:55:08] Speaker C: Pyramid was upside down. [01:55:09] Speaker B: Right. [01:55:10] Speaker C: You know, for all of those. [01:55:12] Speaker D: And that's the opposite that we're talking. [01:55:14] Speaker C: And that's the opposite that we're talking about. [01:55:15] Speaker D: It's. It's so hard to trust that even. [01:55:19] Speaker B: Right. Searching online now, even been. Even though we've been doing it for several years now, there's still times when I'm like, I really hope that this is right. Like, you know what I mean? Like, because you still, you still read stuff that. And you're like, yes. [01:55:37] Speaker C: But again, we go back to tangible evidence. Like, okay, but my body's not inflamed. My hands aren't itching. My body doesn't. [01:55:46] Speaker B: I've lost 30 pounds and kept it. [01:55:48] Speaker C: Off and eating the way I was. I was hurting, my body was inflamed, I was on medications like, whatever. The thing is. So sometimes we just have to step out on our own and take what might feel like is a risk and say, okay, there is a group of people over here and sometimes my litmus is. If mainstream is like crying out about whatever they're saying. Like, oh, they probably are saying something that I want to listen to and the listening and just taking that extra just risk and doing it and then getting your own personal, you know, what do we say? You know, n of 1 or whatever sort of experiment and saying, okay, but it is working for me and it is working for you. And it did work for her. [01:56:41] Speaker D: Yeah. And the what. What we're all being told to do has led to a crisis. [01:56:50] Speaker C: Absolutely. [01:56:51] Speaker D: Of unhealthiness. You know, pick the disease or list of diseases that you want. [01:56:56] Speaker B: Conditions, really. And that's the evidence you need. Right. I mean, that's all the evidence you need. Look around. [01:57:01] Speaker D: Right, right. [01:57:02] Speaker B: If you can. If you can say, gee, I think people are much healthier now than they were 30 years ago, then great, keep eating the way you're eating. [01:57:11] Speaker D: Right. [01:57:11] Speaker B: But I don't think there's a person who can honestly say that. [01:57:15] Speaker D: No. [01:57:16] Speaker B: So you got to. And say, well, what changed? [01:57:20] Speaker A: There's, you know, there's so much work to be done. If you think about how big this is, I mean, the conflicting information that you find online, the conflicting information that you get from your doctors, the conflicting information that you get from nutritionists, and it's just so widespread. There's so much work to do. And while I do have hope that that's going to be changing and changing soon, we have so far to go, it seems. [01:57:49] Speaker C: Well, we have an addicted nation. [01:57:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:57:51] Speaker B: Right. [01:57:52] Speaker C: But we are very, very addicted. And so to think that overnight things are going to start changing people. This is going to take time. This is a aircraft carrier. We're going to try to turn around. [01:58:06] Speaker B: Right. [01:58:06] Speaker C: And it's going to take some serious time to get people to even understand the level. [01:58:12] Speaker B: And it may not even be our generation. [01:58:14] Speaker C: No, it may not. No. Probably won't. [01:58:16] Speaker B: You know what I mean? [01:58:17] Speaker D: Our generation will die young and maybe the next generation will learn. Maybe. [01:58:24] Speaker B: Maybe. Yeah. [01:58:25] Speaker D: I mean, we sat. We spent literal days researching the. And the more we learned about nutrition on our own, the angrier we got. Angrier and angrier we got at being totally misled. And it was one of those. We could not get enough information when we. And at the time, it was keto. Right. Like, but when. When we started really researching it and really digging into what's happening, there was like I. The. The realization that I didn't understand the basic biology of my own body. Like, there was. There is a different fuel source that I've never even heard of. [01:59:21] Speaker B: Right. [01:59:22] Speaker D: Like, how's that? [01:59:25] Speaker B: Right. Right. [01:59:27] Speaker D: You like, well, the whole. [01:59:30] Speaker B: Even possible for me, it was like when I realized that the whole concept of calories is nonsense, really. I mean, for the most part, it's. [01:59:43] Speaker D: A measure of heat. Right. Your hot tub has calories. [01:59:45] Speaker B: Right. But that's been pushed so Hard. Right. But then I remember one day, just thinking back to the days when we still lived in Phoenix and we belonged to a gym. Like, I would run on a treadmill for like an hour and would burn off, like, less calories than, like one candy bar, right? [02:00:08] Speaker C: Yes. [02:00:09] Speaker B: Like, you're never going to exercise off the standard American diet ever. [02:00:16] Speaker D: Ever. [02:00:17] Speaker B: Like, ever. Like, you could literally run the entire day while eating the standard American Diet. You're still going to get fat. [02:00:24] Speaker D: And I remember the first time Shelly said to me, well, diet is king and exercise is queen. And I was like, no way. Like, that can't be true. [02:00:36] Speaker B: And I wish it wasn't, honestly, because I would rather go for a walk or go for a run or work out every morning and then just be able to eat whatever I want all day long. Like, I would do that if that were an option. I would do that. I'd be like, I'll go on a 2 mile, 3 mile, 5 mile, 10 mile hike every morning if for the rest of the day I can eat whatever I want. Yeah, it's not going to happen. [02:01:00] Speaker D: Right. And the realization that. No, she's actually right. Like, what you eat really is what matters. [02:01:09] Speaker B: Right. [02:01:10] Speaker D: It was like, oh, my gosh. And then all of the research into actually what you eat, again, it was just like, mind blowing. I cannot. And you know, the immediate was the food pyramid is a lie. [02:01:27] Speaker B: Right. [02:01:27] Speaker D: And then it's just like, what else? [02:01:30] Speaker B: Right. [02:01:30] Speaker A: Absolutely. [02:01:33] Speaker B: Why don't we start with what isn't? [02:01:38] Speaker D: Oh, man. Yeah. That was a crazy couple of months for us right there. [02:01:42] Speaker C: It was, yeah. Yeah. [02:01:44] Speaker B: But at the end of the day, I think if you just Whole Foods. [02:01:48] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:01:49] Speaker B: At least to start with, and then maybe find your kind of like, niche diet that you want feel better on, but just go to Whole Foods to start. Right. Like, not the store. [02:01:59] Speaker A: The store. [02:02:00] Speaker B: I mean, you could go to the store. [02:02:01] Speaker C: Yeah, sure. [02:02:02] Speaker B: Eat. But you know, single ingredient, real food or real foods that are made from foods, then you're. You're probably going to be good. [02:02:11] Speaker D: Great. [02:02:12] Speaker B: Better than 75%? [02:02:14] Speaker D: Yeah. Oh, yeah. [02:02:15] Speaker C: If you could eat whole food and I would add one other thing and that I think that any. Everyone would just make leaps and bounds in their health. Get seed oils out of your diet. [02:02:24] Speaker B: Oh, for sure. [02:02:25] Speaker C: If you can get seed oils out and eat whole food. [02:02:28] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:02:28] Speaker C: Your body will thank you in ways that you never could imagine. [02:02:32] Speaker D: I think something that often slips through in the eat whole food discussion is the stop drinking your calories. [02:02:40] Speaker C: Oh, right. [02:02:40] Speaker A: Oh, man. [02:02:41] Speaker D: You know, like that those that Empty energy that you're pouring into your body that it just can't handle. Yeah. You know, go. Go back to some more natural beverages. Also is part of eating whole food. [02:02:57] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm not saying. You're not saying just drink water only. But more natural beverages than things that are chemically comprised. [02:03:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [02:03:08] Speaker D: That contains so much energy in such a manner that your body just. [02:03:14] Speaker C: Zero nutrition. [02:03:15] Speaker D: Yeah. Your body really can't do anything else with it than store. [02:03:19] Speaker C: Mm. We're gonna do a little bit of a lightning round. [02:03:23] Speaker A: Oh, boy. [02:03:23] Speaker C: Okay. Find your lightning round feet. [02:03:27] Speaker D: Got it. [02:03:28] Speaker C: Okay. So we'll take turns. [02:03:30] Speaker D: Okay. [02:03:30] Speaker C: Y'all fire your answers at will. Okay. They're just light hearted, fun questions. Okay. Okay, here we go. If you could only raise one animal or grow one crop for the rest of your life, what would it be? [02:03:48] Speaker B: Cattle. [02:03:51] Speaker A: Dairy? Cows. [02:03:53] Speaker B: Cows. [02:03:55] Speaker D: Cows. Interesting. [02:03:56] Speaker B: Nice. [02:03:57] Speaker D: What if that's the animal? What about a crop, a plant? [02:04:06] Speaker A: So many variables. [02:04:08] Speaker B: Right. [02:04:08] Speaker C: But you just have to say one. [02:04:10] Speaker B: Grass for the cows. Does that count? [02:04:13] Speaker D: Fair enough. [02:04:15] Speaker C: I'm in fescue. [02:04:18] Speaker D: Good answer. Good answer. [02:04:21] Speaker B: Otherwise, tomatoes. [02:04:22] Speaker D: Tomatoes, yeah. [02:04:24] Speaker B: From a purely selfish standpoint. [02:04:25] Speaker A: Now you've gotten me thinking. Probably like field corn so that I could feed it to my cow, who needs it, because she's a high producer and isn't 100 grass. [02:04:38] Speaker C: It is a fantastic thing that a cow can eat grass and make you protein, Right? [02:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:04:42] Speaker C: Isn't that phenomenal? [02:04:43] Speaker D: Yeah, it is. What is your favorite homestead meal to prepare? [02:04:48] Speaker A: Chili. [02:04:54] Speaker B: That's a tough one. And anything grilled. I mean, I love to just grill, so steak. [02:05:01] Speaker D: Nice. [02:05:02] Speaker B: Let's go with steak. [02:05:03] Speaker D: All right. [02:05:05] Speaker C: Have you ever had a funny or bizarre encounter with an animal on your farm? [02:05:12] Speaker B: Yes, actually. I got a funny story to tell you. Just happened. Now, not a farm animal, but a wild animal. So it just happened yesterday, actually. I was out my tree stand and I'm like. I have, like, a ghillie suit that I wear, so I'm like, super camouflage, right? Like, you can see my eyeballs. And that's it. I'm. So I'm up in my tree stand and I'm like, super quiet, and I see this squirrel, like, five trees away from me. And it's. It spots me and it knows that I'm there, but it can't tell what I am. So he starts squawking. Then he jumps one tree closer, and he's, like, staring at me. And he jumps another tree closer, and he gets like. This is like over, like a half hour period where he's like, Trying to figure out what I am. And I'm just kind of like, watching him out the corner of my eye. Finally he gets, like, on a branch, like, like right here. And he's like. It was like the funniest thing. It went on and on. He's just, like, staring, like, trying to figure out what I am. And then I moved just a little bit and he like. But it was like a half hour of him, like, stalking you. Stalking me. Like, at one point I was like, is he, like. Is he about to, like, leap on my head? Like, I don't know what I'm gonna do if that happens. [02:06:23] Speaker D: He's about to tell all the Christmas vacations. [02:06:26] Speaker B: Right, Right. So, yeah, that was a funny. It was. It was the funniest thing that's happened to me out hunting. [02:06:32] Speaker A: Nothing that funny has happened to me with Anne. I don't even know. [02:06:36] Speaker D: Okay, what's a project that you started and immediately regretted but still laugh about? Now? [02:06:47] Speaker B: I know. [02:06:48] Speaker A: Go ahead. [02:06:49] Speaker B: When we still lived in Phoenix, we had this brilliant idea to build a structure over our raised bed garden. Kind of like a. Kind of like a greenhouse. But we built it on a PVC pipe and, like, flimsy PVC pipe and tarps. [02:07:13] Speaker D: There you go. [02:07:14] Speaker B: Well, like, we never get rain in Phoenix, right? But, like, the day after we built this thing, it rained. It just, like, filled with water. Like, the tarps were just, like, filled with water. And, like, we had to go out there and, like, the whole thing, like, just collapsed. Like, it was like. It was the. We still laugh about it because we're like, the neighbors had to have just been like, what are like. [02:07:39] Speaker A: No. But even prior to that, with that same structure, we were so dumb, it, like, kind of got cold and we had plants under there. So we plugged in an electric heater to put out there outside to just try to, like, heat this, like, relatively open, like, fake kind of house thing. Because our broccoli. Our broccoli was gonna freeze. [02:08:09] Speaker B: Cause it got down to 50 in the desert. We were like, this is way too cold. [02:08:14] Speaker A: Oh, no. [02:08:14] Speaker B: We have to protect the broccoli. Yeah. [02:08:17] Speaker D: That's awesome. [02:08:18] Speaker C: Well, that's hilarious. [02:08:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:08:20] Speaker C: Oh, gosh. [02:08:21] Speaker B: You gotta start learning somewhere, right? [02:08:25] Speaker C: What's your go to? Homesteading? Hack or shortcut? [02:08:36] Speaker A: Zip ties. [02:08:38] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And plumbing tape. Like, plumbing hanger. I use that stuff for everything. [02:08:45] Speaker C: Oh, that's a great follow on question. Look at your. That's great. [02:08:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I use, like. I buy like a thousand foot roll of it at a time because I use it for Everything. [02:08:57] Speaker A: We currently have, like, fencing T posts, like, pasted together with, like, not bungee cords, but that. That gate that we have behind the workshop that keeps the cows out of the hay field. [02:09:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, honestly. Yeah. Ratchet straps. Ratchet straps are godsend. [02:09:24] Speaker D: Every time we go to Harbor Freight, we walk out with zip ties and ratchet straps. [02:09:27] Speaker A: Right. [02:09:28] Speaker D: It doesn't matter what we walked in for. [02:09:29] Speaker A: I know, right? [02:09:30] Speaker D: We were walking out with zip ties and ratchet straps. [02:09:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:09:32] Speaker A: We've ratchet strapped so many things together. [02:09:34] Speaker B: To hold up fence posts and. [02:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Because we don't even have fence posts. So we just ratchet strap the two T posts together so it tightens up the barbed wire and the cows don't get through anymore. [02:09:45] Speaker B: Right. [02:09:46] Speaker D: We've got ratchet straps around hay bales with cattle panels wrapped around it, you know? [02:09:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For a homestead hack, it's like whatever works most of the time. A lot of days, it's the best you can do. Like, oh, that worked. Move on tight and. [02:10:05] Speaker C: Good enough. [02:10:06] Speaker D: Yeah. So you each have to answer this one. If you could give a beginning homesteader just one tool, which one would it be? [02:10:16] Speaker A: Does it have to be a tool from, like, the workshop? [02:10:20] Speaker C: Like just something you use? Anything. I mean, you could be it from the inside the house or outside. [02:10:24] Speaker A: I'd say a pressure canner because it can also double as a water bath canner. And then you can start to learn how to can your food, preserve your food. And there. [02:10:34] Speaker D: Expensive. [02:10:37] Speaker B: I'd say a good set of knives. [02:10:41] Speaker A: Oh, that's a good one. Not those stupid serrated ones either. [02:10:45] Speaker B: No good knives for processing animals. [02:10:49] Speaker C: What's your favorite season on the homestead. [02:10:52] Speaker B: And why the next one? [02:10:55] Speaker C: Okay, that is so true. [02:11:00] Speaker B: Next. Next season will slow down a little bit. [02:11:04] Speaker C: So true. That's a good answer. [02:11:10] Speaker A: I don't know. I really like each one for different reasons. I really do. [02:11:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:11:15] Speaker A: I wish that summer and winter were shorter, but I like them also in the winter, you can recuperate a little bit. Hopefully summer is, you know, the bounty of summer, but I like spring. I like them all. [02:11:32] Speaker D: Cool. [02:11:34] Speaker C: They each bring their own thing with them. [02:11:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. And every. There's something to be excited about for every season. And I think that's kind of what you were getting. Getting to, like the current season gets old. Gets old. You know, there. There's different work with every season. So, like, in the middle of the one season, you're like, this is getting old. I can't wait for the next one. [02:11:54] Speaker D: Right. [02:11:55] Speaker C: You know, and then it Gets old. [02:11:56] Speaker A: And then it gets old. [02:11:57] Speaker B: Right. [02:11:58] Speaker C: Because, oh, we look forward to winter because we can just kind of just simmer. [02:12:02] Speaker A: Yeah. But boy howdy, I know. [02:12:04] Speaker C: It gets so ready for spring. [02:12:06] Speaker A: Right. [02:12:06] Speaker C: And then you play 25,000. [02:12:08] Speaker B: Think about how excited you are for gardening season to start. [02:12:11] Speaker C: Yes. [02:12:12] Speaker B: But then how excited you are for gardening season to end. Yes. Right. [02:12:15] Speaker C: Like, and I think that's the way life was meant to be lived. You know, I think that's the seat with the season. [02:12:21] Speaker B: Right. [02:12:22] Speaker C: Rather than just the monotony the seasons bring that needed change. [02:12:27] Speaker B: Like, we're taking the winter off from growing in our greenhouse this year. This is the first time in five years we're not growing in the greenhouse this winter because we have some work to do in there and didn't want plants in there. But I'm actually excited to have a winter. When you have a greenhouse, it's like you're gardening year round. [02:12:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:12:47] Speaker C: That's exciting. [02:12:47] Speaker A: It's kind of old and the spring isn't as exciting when you're still growing from the winter, you know? [02:12:57] Speaker C: Right. [02:12:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:13:00] Speaker D: What's the one thing on your homestead you'd never want to give up? [02:13:03] Speaker A: The lifestyle. I don't know about a physical thing, but the lifestyle. Like I don't ever want to just move back to the city. I don't ever want to just not have a reason to go outside and work with my hands and move my body. [02:13:18] Speaker B: It's very hard to transition back and not. [02:13:22] Speaker A: And to have. To not. To not know where my food is coming from. To have, you know, every bite be questioning whether I'm going to get sick or what was used to make it or who touched it or, you know, once you become. Once you be. Once you grow and raise so much of your food, you really become skeptical of eating food elsewhere. [02:13:45] Speaker C: Yes, you do. [02:13:46] Speaker A: And big time. I just don't think I could transact and transition back into a lifestyle that isn't homesteading. [02:13:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:13:57] Speaker C: What's your favorite way to unwind after a long hard day of work? [02:14:04] Speaker B: We have a hot tub. That's pretty nice. [02:14:06] Speaker C: That's chill. [02:14:07] Speaker D: That's chill. [02:14:07] Speaker B: Just one of those blow up ones. But it's. [02:14:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it is really nice. [02:14:12] Speaker C: Yeah. Just really relax. [02:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:14:17] Speaker D: If you had to describe your homestead in just three words, what would it be? [02:14:25] Speaker B: Lots of work. It's true. [02:14:36] Speaker A: Yeah. I think one word would be freedom. And. [02:14:45] Speaker B: Never ever finished trying to think of all the three word answers. No. [02:14:53] Speaker A: Optimistic. [02:14:54] Speaker C: You're so oozing positive. [02:15:01] Speaker A: If you are going to inspire somebody by Describing your homestead in three words. Never ending work. [02:15:10] Speaker B: That's a three word answer. There you go. [02:15:13] Speaker A: No days off. [02:15:15] Speaker B: Right. Vacation. Vacation. What? Vacation. That's three words. [02:15:24] Speaker C: What's the most surprising thing you've learned about yourself through homesteading? You like work. [02:15:33] Speaker B: I can do a lot more than I thought I could. Confidence means a lot. And also just being willing to screw stuff up. [02:15:46] Speaker C: You have to be willing to fail. [02:15:47] Speaker B: Right. [02:15:48] Speaker C: To live this lifestyle. [02:15:50] Speaker A: I guess I'm just shocked that I can just do all these things and like, have so much practical knowledge that I like learned on my own. And like, I guess it's. I feel shocked now when people don't just know the stuff I know, you know? [02:16:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:16:14] Speaker A: And I can't remember a time where I didn't know all of this stuff. [02:16:17] Speaker B: It's become second nature now. [02:16:18] Speaker A: It really has. And to me it seems weird when people don't. No. [02:16:24] Speaker B: Don't know some basic things. Yeah. [02:16:27] Speaker A: We live in a bubble because of who we hang out with. I mean, like, you guys and, you know, a lot of our church is active in the homesteading and farming community. It's like, so we're like completely surrounded and like what we watch on TV is like. Or we don't watch TV, but you know, on YouTube and the programs and stuff. I mean, everything revolves around this lifestyle. Our kid. I mean, we can talk about this stuff to our kids and they know what we're talking about and all that kind of stuff. And so then to just like encounter people, people who don't know this stuff is really weird. [02:16:57] Speaker C: Like what? Like we had someone ask how to. More than one person. Well, I wouldn't know what to do with the whole chicken. How do you thaw a whole chicken? [02:17:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:17:06] Speaker C: And when you get questions like that, you realize just how far. How disconnected people are from their food. [02:17:14] Speaker B: Right. [02:17:14] Speaker D: And how much you've learned and how much you've learned. [02:17:17] Speaker B: Right. [02:17:17] Speaker C: We grew up cooking. I mean, I don't. I don't. [02:17:19] Speaker D: I know, but I mean like, you can, you can now take a day old chick and turn it into that whole chicken that you're. [02:17:25] Speaker C: Yeah. Wow. [02:17:25] Speaker B: Right. [02:17:26] Speaker D: You know? Yeah. [02:17:27] Speaker B: Right. And. Yeah, there were times in all of our lives where that was. [02:17:30] Speaker C: We didn't. Right. [02:17:31] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:17:32] Speaker C: But being with the willingness. [02:17:34] Speaker B: I mean, and the guy who was upset about four chickens in his garage. Yeah. Now as a farm. [02:17:39] Speaker D: Right. Yeah. [02:17:40] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, that's. [02:17:42] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:17:42] Speaker A: I had a hard time and can. [02:17:44] Speaker B: Answer all the questions. Right. Like. [02:17:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I had a hard time eating the very first eggs that ever came out of one of our chicken's butts. I mean, it gagged me a little bit. I was just like, this is weird. [02:17:55] Speaker D: That is one of my favorite shirts of yours. The. Guess what. [02:17:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [02:18:01] Speaker D: I just love that one. What's a dream project or someday goal that you'd love to pursue? [02:18:09] Speaker B: A big fishing pond. [02:18:10] Speaker D: Nice. [02:18:11] Speaker B: Yeah. We don't have time to go to the lake. Like, I'd like to. To fish. Sort of have a pond on our place. That would be. [02:18:23] Speaker A: I would just like to get to a point where I have more time to do the things that I'm still interested in that I haven't been able to pursue because we're just so busy with everything else. I'd like time to learn more about herbalism and to grow more of those kinds of things. I'd like more time to. You know, I'd get back into pottery, which I haven't done in 20 plus years. Yeah, I'd like to have more time to study the Bible, you know, so we might be getting there. [02:18:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:18:58] Speaker C: That's fantastic. Well, thank you guys so much for coming and hanging out with us today. This has been special. [02:19:04] Speaker D: Yeah. Really, really cool. [02:19:06] Speaker A: Thanks for having us. [02:19:07] Speaker B: Thanks for having us. [02:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah. This is the first podcast we've ever done. [02:19:09] Speaker B: We've never done our flight. Got here on time and we made it. [02:19:16] Speaker C: Well, we did fly them first class. [02:19:18] Speaker D: Oh, yes. Yes. [02:19:19] Speaker A: That's very generous of you. [02:19:20] Speaker D: It was really nice. [02:19:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:19:23] Speaker D: Oh, man. [02:19:24] Speaker C: Well, we look forward to seeing your YouTube videos coming out here Every. What y'all. [02:19:30] Speaker B: Gosh. Y'all do three a week right now. We do three a week. Monday we do a live stream, and then Wednesday and Saturday. Videos. [02:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:19:38] Speaker C: Yep. So Living traditions homestead on YouTube. [02:19:43] Speaker B: Correct. [02:19:43] Speaker C: Or livingtraditions. Homestead.com. [02:19:46] Speaker B: Correct. [02:19:47] Speaker C: For products? [02:19:48] Speaker B: All of the above. Sure. [02:19:49] Speaker C: Whatever. [02:19:50] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:19:50] Speaker C: Yeah. All of the above. [02:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:19:52] Speaker C: Okay. [02:19:52] Speaker B: Our main thing is YouTube. Yep. Yeah. [02:19:55] Speaker D: Awesome. Well, go check out. If you haven't. I can't imagine it. Go check out Living traditions homestead on YouTube. They have over 1100 videos that are an amazing resource for becoming self sufficient. [02:20:10] Speaker C: Thank you guys for joining us again, and until next time. Bye, y'all. [02:20:14] Speaker D: Bye, y'all.