He Quit His Job to Homestead, then LOST IT ALL

very special guest ex-detective classic story quit his job in georgia to pursue the homestead dream in idaho now things didn't turn out as he maybe hoped and dreamed and i think that's a very important story and it happens that way sometimes and we're going to share that but first his story we made it when we were on the great america farm tour the first part of the story quitting the nice detective job doing a good thing and starting a homestead in idaho my friend the permaculture shepherd dan omen from the grass-fed homestead [Music] [Music] four years ago my family and i were living in a suburban area of atlanta in an hoa regulated subdivision i was in law enforcement serving as a detective i did robbery in homicide cases crimes against children crimes against elderly i was at the top of my career i was asked to do educational speaking engagements within my line of work i was receiving a lot of accommodations at work things were going really well the first several years of my job was exceptionally rewarding it was a wonderful experience i had the opportunity to help a lot of people i made a lot of positive change and i derived a lot of personal satisfaction and self-actualization from those experiences and things started to change a little becoming a father when i when we had our son um [Music] sounds like a little lamb a lot of my drive a lot of my what i derived so much pleasure from was being with my family i wanted to be home with my son i wanted to spend more time with my wife and there were a lot of times the police department being on call having to work overnight shifts called out in the middle of the night to work homicides rape cases these were important things that our society obviously needs to have addressed but i always i started to resent it a little that it was taking me away from my son my family we had the idea to make some dramatic changes in our lifestyle around the time my son was born it was probably just leading up to his birth was when things started changing in my mind a little bit i realized that i needed to take more responsibility for our families food security the quality of our food this was something becoming a new father it was just this drive in me that i had to i had to be more responsible i had to be more prepared to take care of my son coming into the world my wife and i both agreed we did not want to be raising a family in atlanta we wanted to leave atlanta we didn't know where but we just knew that we had to get out of the city we wanted to have a place where we could start producing some of our own food for ourselves whether that was just having much more space for vegetable reduction or being able to raise some of our own animals and at the time i wasn't really familiar with the concept of a homestead but i had this vision in my head of food production in some capacity so i did what most people would do in that situation and i started researching i turned to the internet and i started buying books and listening to podcasts over time discovering this vast array of information i came across this concept called permaculture what i found permaculture to be my observation was it's this design science it's the system of critical thinking and analyzing in a radically different way than i had ever had before in any kind of conventional systems and it was applying a design science a methodology of thinking to life design designing systems of sustainability for food production for income for happiness i submitted a three-week notice of resignation at the police department and on my last day it was a terrible feeling i had a lot of uncertainty a lot of doubt i had to go to the storage room where there was a technician who checks in and out all equipment and i had to tender my badge my identification my firearm my sidearm that had been on me every day of my life for the last 10 years it was that badge and what it represented was a large part of who i was whether i wanted to admit that or not but it was my identity for a long time and surrendering that and signing the paperwork that had my employment status as terminated was kind of an eerie feeling after a tremendous amount of research and some traveling and checking out different areas my wife and i came to the conclusion that settling in north idaho was the best situation for us and it's where we wanted to raise a family and my wife was able to keep her job and work remotely with the condition of some travel while i would stay home and establish a homesteading business and homeschool her son what's it like to have your dad home all the time well i help him i'm very happy with when my dad is home i love him and i help him when we moved to idaho we decided that we would move in to a rental place while we were searching for what would be our future homestead we didn't want to just be trying to buy real estate from across the country so we thought we'd get here first and then find where we're going we had a lot of excitement we were really excited moving here i was also just dealing with my resignation at the police department and feeling i was leaving a big part part of myself behind me still i was looking forward ahead with such excitement thinking we're on our way to homesteading this is it with such conviction i knew that this was the right path for us when we got to idaho and we got into our home in town i thought this will be just for a few months while we find our place in six months tops and we'll be getting sheep and chickens and living the dream and the dream did not become reality it it was two and a half years before we actually were able to move on to our homestead during that time i had a really big struggle [Music] i struggled with i struggled with finding my purpose i had left everything behind i'd left my identity my job my career that i had received so much self-actualization from to come to idaho to homestead but there was no homestead i started doubt i started questioning whether i had made the right decision i was trying to find a way to do something more than just be a stay-at-home dad at that point i would i had no obviously no livestock to tend or to start any gardens i was doing nothing but just being a stay-at-home dad and i tried to start several part-time jobs to give myself some sort of meaning and none of them really came to fruition i was doing videography as a hobby when i was at the police department i tried turning that into a professional job while we were waiting to get on the homestead and though i was able to get some traction there it was never enough to it was never enough to have any meaningful income from or sense of accomplishment or satisfaction i was embarrassed i went from being a big shot detective in the city to being home with my son and while that is what i wanted so badly i wanted to be home with him and spend time with him [Applause] i guess as a culture it as a culture we're i guess kind of programmed the males are kind of we're kind of programmed we need to be out providing for our family we need to be productive and i felt so unproductive i was embarrassed when people would ask me well what do you do and i would generally and i'd start answering that question about what i used to do because i was embarrassed to tell them what i do we were on the standard american diet my whole childhood and adult life my wife and i neither of us were really adept at cooking we did a lot of macaroni and cheese and pasta boiling and a few chicken dishes but nothing extravagant and this eventually resulted in some health consequences for my son just the abundance of processed food that we were having it led to him having some severe digestion issues that required some medical attention at that point my wife and i we came to the realization like we need to make some serious changes with our diet we can't have this this is our son is everything to us and when his health got compromised because of decisions we were making about food it it was terrible um we kind of dealt with some guilt over that so we made a dramatic shift in our diet we switched to a whole foods diet where basically we were eating fresh organic healthy vegetables and some meat [Music] thank you [Music] after this diet switch i realized how difficult it can be to source the kind of food that we wanted to eat we were looking for locally grown healthy organic food at the time we were living in town in a subdivision and we weren't able to produce that for ourselves in our situation so this really lit a fire under me i was on this path toward developing our homestead we knew that's the direction we wanted to go but what fueled the fire what made me realize i can't let this go it would be so much easier just to you know go to the grocery and buy our food there and you know live a an easier life that way but i wasn't able to get the healthy food that we needed to get in order to you know prevent having future medical problems there was only one way i could do it that was to do it myself we had to make our own food it was literally two weeks before we were moving on to the homestead i was working on a project for the 10-hour homestead through abundant permaculture justin rhodes project i was helping doing some video editing i was on the telephone with justin and we were discussing the success with his youtube channel and he gave me he gave me what later became known as the 30 day challenge he said dan i think you need to start a youtube channel and if you do it every day for 30 days i'm going to help you out i'll i'll let the view might i'll let my viewers know about your channel and but you got to do it every day for 30 days and my response was well we are two weeks away from moving on to the homestead so moving day will be day one this was absolutely terrifying absolutely terrifying it mainly because i had a very very private life largely due to my role in law enforcement for personal privacy security reasons for the security of my family i had no online presence whatsoever i didn't have a facebook page i went out of my way for a long time to maintain this level of privacy in my life putting out youtube videos was in direct contradiction to everything i had done prior there was this wall of fear that i had to force myself through in order to make it happen my choices were i can a not take the challenge not do youtube and everything kind of stays the same sure i'll move on to my homestead and that's fine or b i can take the challenge do something radically different in my life have the opportunity to have really great experiences and have a be involved in a wonderful homesteading online community and embrace my fear and evolve grow it's not enough just to do a good job raising the animals the animal has to be harvested appropriately respectfully and the greatest honor that can be served is preparing it cooking it properly in the kitchen this triumvirate of food production is what's known as the agrarian renaissance and that is the next evolution in my journey in homesteading taking it to an all new level processing my harvesting my own food on the homestead and preparing it in a manner that honors the food and delivering it to my family giving them the food that was the catalyst for this entire journey to begin with [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] open up [Music] the [Music] oh a new day's done [Music] moving into our second season of homesteading things have been going excellent we are we have a we have a course charted out we know where we're going we're constantly making progress towards our goals but things are not without conflict here just recently um one of my neighbors inquired as to what my weed management program was for this one typical this one type of invasive noxious weed we have here that disperses a seed he of course doesn't want the seed for my weeds on his property and i explained to him that i got my plan it's the sheep they're gonna take that out they love that stuff um he didn't have a whole lot of confidence in that explanation and he really wanted to come over and start spraying on a property and i i told him that we did not need that we did we didn't want to have that happen and um he he insisted a bit that he spray just at least on the outside of our fence still on our property but outside of our perimeter fence and again that would be a violation on how i want to manage this land it would be an ethical violation for me to use the herbicides in our land so to resolve the conflict i told him that i would keep it down by mowing it this mower here is the resolution to the conflict and it also represents one little piece of success that i've made this is the direct result of funds i've raised from the homesteading business here all the proceeds from that went into getting our tractor [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] meanwhile right behind us the sheep got out oh fast little booger hey little buddy show us how it's done come on permaculture shepherd let's go show us how it's done you dealt with a straight lamp a little light bit before once or twice look he's setting up his he's setting up his show okay getting down low oh yes okay he did it you're gonna get back out i mean it's not a big crazy disaster if they get out they always want back in they probably crawled under this i have no idea we have it rigged but they're going out to the pasture like next week so i'm not worried about like securing and securing this too much how'd you get started on sheep i did not have any inclination towards sheep originally yeah but um there was a workshop a you know decades-long shepherdess that was in my area was hosting a sheep workshop like hands-on how to do hoof trimming how to do all the things and i just went because i wanted to learn anything i could about livestock and when i got there and working with the sheep i just fell in love with it i just thought what a perfect animal for someone just on a few acres just getting into homesteading these cattle are big they can be scary they have big old horns all those things the sheep are little they're easy to manage for someone just getting into it [Music] you guys ready to do the chores yes i know little buddy is dan i don't know if he knows this was one of our early inspirations for sheep because i think he was the first person we knew that had sheep it's not it's not a popular thing but i'm doing my darndest to bring it back because it needs to be makes you cool again they're so easy they're so tasty right right yeah they got everything the devil eyes have plus they don't get out as bad and uh they taste better it's beef with more flavor that's right little buddy's not afraid of a hard work dan you want to feed the big pig yes okay beefcake so you got pigs now i i get them in the spring and raise them out through the fall so i don't have them right now all right i'll be getting them next week actually wait have you ever dealt with a pig this big nope this is probably 300 pounds i usually harvest about 100 pounds sooner yeah i know right and this pig is gonna be twice this big he's gonna be six hundred josiah's helping you oh don't get hot caught up he's hurrying buddy now put that off that because there's some poop on that oh there you go yep you can do it my man come on man man help him out lily get it started a little bit that's teamwork good job another thing i remember from our visit on the great american farm tour with dan is he had he built my chick shaw but he like 10xed it with a millennial falcon automatic door opener [Music] automatic door shut on my chick shell this is like the millennial falcon oh look he's getting the mice yes at first i was gonna get upset at him because he's in our potatoes but when we pulled the tarp off of this we had what it does my rats and mice and we smash them yeah so now we don't have to the the royal can get them such a good farm cat you guys ready to feed the three little pigs yes we're all out fast we're gonna knock your bucket over good sheep getting their minerals aren't they adorable just jumping up on the thing so dan was one of the first impressions i had for sheep and i remember that's one thing i remember about your visit is we moved those sheep that day we you remember that i remember that honey that was like four years ago you were just a wee little thing but we moved them it was a dry summer it was all those fires that year and we moved them from a dry spot to a green spot with peas yes yes they were field peas and then soak them in water yeah and they ferment a little bit and next day they were good stuff this is what it's all about folks breakfast from the land little buddy dan's son what are you eating uh a frittata they come from chickens they're from your chickens yes oh hey where do eggs come from chickens ah where did chickens come from uh eggs that's true you got me we could keep going in a circle couldn't we buddy your chickens are from the farm yeah but you are tired that's a good answer we got a chicken from my grandpa okay it's final funny how the um circle of chickens goes in a circle yeah chickens come from the egg and the egg come from the chicken yeah what's the plan here dan what's supposed to happen this morning what's supposed to happen this is this is a daily routine so i got it down pretty good so you're pretty confident this is going to happen huh i'm pretty confident because we've done it every day since they've been here little buddy about what little buddy what he's going to say is it going to happen yes okay what's going to happen dan what's going to happen is i'm going gonna call the sheep i'm i just let out a little whistle and all my girls they're they're trained my rams are separate for obvious reasons we don't want to have out of season breeding so this is for my my use i will whistle my girls they will come running to me come on girls they're a little slow this morning that's slow normally that's that's excellent lightning speed what there you go girls good girl come on blue you ready how have you trained them to go to a whistle it was really early spring we were having a heavy winter still it was really wet and snowy so we had them in our corral for a while every day when i'd come out to feed them multiple times a day i would just whistle so they associated food with whistle okay pavlov's dog right so they will come flock to me and i'm gonna open the fencing and i usually count i go one two three three here we go and we take off and they follow me i lead them into the next paddock i lead my sheep i want them to follow me i don't want to be driving when you drive them you're putting pressure on them they're less comfortable they're more likely to veer off and that's when you get people on big acreage they have to bring in dogs which is awesome i'd love to be able to get working dogs we're just not there scale wise they're going to follow me into the next paddock and then immediately when they get over there they're going to say whoa there's rye grass over here and that's where they're going to focus on on one side i have more rye grass the other side is a noxious sweet tansy which my sheep will eat i'm using them as part of our weed management program it's it's a real benefit having the sheep because nobody else has eaten that if we had cattle they're not eating it the chickens aren't touching it our sheep eat it so they will get to that but they're going to eat that grass first the sheep are part of the regeneration process here where nobody else is going to eat this stuff but i can get my sheep to eat it it's going to the growth here eventually they're going to graze this out and i'm not applying any kind of chemicals that are harmful to the environment and in the end we get food for our table i'm putting high quality nutrient dense 100 percent grass-fed and partially tansy fit lamb on my table to feed my family as well as sharing some with [Music] neighbors [Music] [Applause] [Music] we're gonna use the piece to lure him i imagine then what yeah and then i'm gonna whistle which is gonna signal to them that it's time for a paddock move [Music] and what the chillers are gonna do is listen see if they can keep up with the sheep the sheep are fast these guys can run so let's see if the sh the children you guys where you're you're running now so you're gonna chase the sheep right are they gonna run i would like them to be behind the sheep so they didn't get trampled okay uh because they will get faster okay y'all are gonna stay behind the street you guys listen to dan okay i'm gonna open the the electric fencing so the sheep can get out and i'm just going to sprint as fast as i can the plan is they will follow me because one i train them to do this in short little moves every day okay also these peas are going to keep their attention [Music] so [Music] it was awesome it went just as i hoped just as we planned uh no no sheep went wayward we made it to the paddock and everyone's eating peas and happy you're still breathing hard i'm breathing a little hard mom you can't keep up with him a little camera no i was like i like got to here and he was like way over there i'm like oh there's no i can't i know i know i can't sprint as fast as jack you can't keep up with the x detective we had a blast at his place this brings out good memories it's cool now that he's here uh but his story his story took a little uh twist let's get into that so dan what happened after we left give us this four four year for your update here after the great american farm tour uh 2017 things were really picking up i mean we we had lambing we were lambing our own sheep we had pigs farrowing chicken breeding we had a lot going on it was a very active homestead and then things took a turn for the worse in the winter of 2018 so going into 2018 we started having internal family issues and that ultimately led to my wife leaving which was devastating emotionally spiritually but also for the homestead i built the homestead as a family for the family and then the family was destroyed [Music] and that destroyed a part of me internally and it destroyed my drive to work the homestead the way i had [Music] okay they're gonna get that hay out dan thank you so much for sharing that i can't imagine but i don't think you're alone i think this is a reality i think this happens all over the country and worlds and so maybe share because i think i mean here we are four years later this happened a long time ago what happened to you in the homestead so i was absolutely absolutely crushed i could not believe that this was happening i cannot believe that my wife was leaving and everything that we were working for everything that was just everything was just clicking everything was going so well and then bang it was all gone i still had 25 sheep i still had probably about 10 or 12 pigs at the time 100 and some chickens at the time they still needed daily care i was barely able to take care of myself and i was how am i going to care for these animals in the process i will say having those animals having that reason to still get me up out of bed in the morning uh gave me a purpose which was really important at that time i didn't want to do it i hated doing it because i was in my own grief but i got up because i knew those animals needed to eat they still needed me and that that gave me a purpose in that time of of grieving that was really good for me the divorce was finalized fall of 2018 and i knew going into that winter being in north idaho we have a real winter we have it can get heavy sometimes so i knew going into that winter i needed to take some time off to heal i didn't want to be out trudging through the snow feeding the animals and all that so all throughout that year from the spring to the fall i started slowly de-stocking which started first with the chickens sold all my lambs off then my breeding stock and then in the pigs until the point i just had my livestock guardian dogs but i knew that winter i needed to take some time off to heal to rebuild myself and i figured spring of 2019 i'll be back i'll i'll start off we'll get this going again then spring in 2019 came and i still wasn't ready so when you took that time off did you think i'm just gonna take a break or did you think hey i'm i can't i might quit at that time i thought it was just gonna be a break okay i'll be back in the spring i just need the winter take a little time off and recoup but spring came and i just wasn't ready i wasn't feeling it [Music] and i didn't i didn't get livestock at all in 2019. i did not want to let that part of my life go i had completely redesigned rebuilt my life from the nine to five it was a government job too it was a it was a good job good benefits i left all that to live this lifestyle this new lifestyle homesteading raising our own food i sacrificed a lot to get there there's two pieces to it there's i don't want to walk away from everything i built this entire new lifestyle it meant so much to me and i had to keep reminding myself of the why why did i do this one because i want to build resilience in my life for my family i want to be able to feed my family through hard times through good times i want to be able to raise my own food so i know the quality if i walk away i lose those very important things to me but on the other side of it i also didn't see what the path forward was for me i was alone my son was gone half the time we went through a 50 50 custody situation my every day of getting up and going out and doing these routines with my son was gone half the time so i had him only half the week the other half the week i wasn't even a father anymore and i couldn't see my son for three sometimes four days a week and in that i had to rediscover who i am not just as a father not just as a husband because that was gone but who am i who am i on these days that i don't have this anymore and that's what 2019 was really about going through this time the struggle of relearning who i am outside of those roles when i moved on to the homestead and was doing that full-time spending a lot of time with my son that was my full identity father husband and homesteader after that and when those first two were gone i had to fill that with something you ready for a saren thank you my man so dan curious what are some what are a few ways that you began uh to heal to find resolve the first thing was my my faith i [Music] ugh so now you know i pulled out my bag exactly you're right i'm good all right you didn't pull out your back did you i'm good all right so the first thing with my faith i had gotten really complacent with that so i'm a christian and we were christian family but so when uh my wife left i really leaned back into that and got connected in a faith community that i had neglected for a long time so that was number one number two i went back to my past and started thinking okay what did i used to do before i was a husband before i was a father what did i do for myself and i was like oh yeah you used to be a good musician so i i tapped back into that and wound up getting plugged in into a band in my town [Music] and started playing gigs again and having a lot of fun with that three i thought i have these few days a week to myself now what's something i always wanted to do but couldn't do with that time and i was like i know ballroom dancing [Music] [Laughter] [Music] there's a dance instructor that would come up from the big city once a week to our town and do dance lessons for the community so i started taking those dance lessons and through those those different things i started healing i was getting to a much better place things were starting to pick up i was feeling better little buddy's taking a milking he just jumps right in doesn't he now we're gonna try dan let's see what you got dan you're getting it act like he can't milk just slow oh yeah you're obviously back into it now what was the moment there are two important factors in answering that one when i was taking dance lessons i met a girl there so this was a year and a half after my wife left or so and i met a girl in the dance classes as a dance partner which evolved into a dating relationship my property before i bought it was very abused it was cattle land for a long time it was not grazed properly and then it was vacant it was not grazed for probably 15 20 years when i took it over it was in rough shape so i put a lot of management rotational grazing like diligent daily pasture rotation with the animals sheep pigs chickens and i was seeing dramatic results and improvement then 2019 came spring of 2019 and it was moving back the other way it gave me an unsettled feeling i was like watching all the hard work three years of really hard work just go down the drain just because i wasn't managing it anymore and that's when it really hit me as i was pulling into my driveway and seeing all these noxious weeds come back up all this work i put into getting them gone to build pasture and i thought to myself i need to get a couple pigs i had lost a lot of confidence in myself as as a man like my personal confidence levels way down my confidence level as a homesteader as a as as a youtuber all that was very low at that point i wasn't sure like can i really do this can am i in the place to do this i wanted to do it but i just wasn't sure i wasn't ready to make that jump so the the girl that i referenced dating in from dan's class this is this is a really critical moment i just casually mentioned to her i was just kind of thinking about getting some pigs and she lit up her face big smile like she got so excited and she was extremely supportive and very encouraging she's like absolutely you need to get these animals you need to get back into this and she said i will help you with whatever i can to help you to make this happen and with that having that encouragement having somebody just to be there and offer that support it boosted my confidence and within probably less than six weeks i had pigs back on the property [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you dan for sharing that story and the story goes on and what a fascinating story uh i would encourage folks to go and check you out at the grass fed homestead on youtube for your continued story one video a week follow this journey because it's just a real life journey that's right and folks can benefit from it

Channel: Justin Rhodes

Views: 697,025

Keywords:

Id: qQ3u1qiAEmw

Length: 45min 50sec (2750 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021