Why Live a Homesteading Life?

hey everybody this is Josh and Carolyn with homesteading family and welcome to episode number nine of the pantry chapter alright so today's topic is gonna be about why Josh and Carolyn homestead yeah kind of got it that's a big topic that is a big topic yeah yeah and that's kind of taken off of the last pantry chat on what is homesteading mhm yeah and a few guys were asking about us and why we're doing what we're doing so we're gonna dive in that into that today but first let's catch up a little bit what's what's going on with you this week oh boy well we are really starting to be into the spring rush now we don't see anything budding or blooming yet so this is kind of our moment to get ahead of everything absolutely the window race with spring race with the weather yeah so this week I have been dealing with eggs we've got lots and lots of eggs now I heard in passing upstairs that you guys put up cuz you preserve eggs several different ways ranked at the water glossing method the line method yeah but you also freeze a lot yeah and did I hear like 250 eggs or something today just we had to get them into the freezer back in the pantry we're starting to grow yeah and thank the kids are doing the eggs the six year old is seven year old is doing the eggs and so they weren't in an order yet and so I didn't know which ones were newer and which ones are older size of Liz's get them all in the freezer and start fresh and then this next week we are starting to put them in our lime solution so we'll be putting up lots of eggs yeah we're getting nearly two dozen a day yeah and we're definitely not at full production we have some new chickens coming in in the next few weeks so that's gonna go up even more so I'm curious just we haven't talked about this in a while different preservation methods why freezing I mean there's a reason we obviously we don't want to rely on too much frozen but that's part of our preservation methods but but why do you freeze eggs what's the benefit how does that fit into our overall right I love having some of the eggs in the freezer because they're all beat and ready to go and it just makes preparation time on a lot of things a lot faster for if they're in the freezer especially for the kids and you know we always are trying to diversify our food source most of our eggs are going into noodles or they're going into the cool basement space in the lime solution or they're just sitting on the shelf because they're unwashed fresh eggs until we're ready to use them but it's great to also have some of them in another location in the freezer that way if you ever have anything go with wrong with one preservation method or you run out of one thing you've got another stash of them somewhere else nice and real convenience with those you can just kind of pull those out yeah Tom they're ready to go you can even quick thaw them if you want already scrambled michelle's yeah yeah cool good so what about you what have you been up to uh garden yeah trying to get take this window yeah and start to get the greenhouse in the garden in shape so we've got our first seeds in the ground yeah in the greenhouse yeah and it's still pretty cool and it's starting to warm up there a little bit and those are all leafy greens basically yeah you know spinach mustards a little bit of kale some lettuces you know cool weather crops and so getting those going and I'm just I'm excited about that that means we've got some fresh veg into the next 21 to 30 days you know micro green babies but we plant them really dense really tight so that we can harvest out the microgreens and still let things mature as they grow that gets us an earlier harvest I'm really excited about that and this is the first greenhouse we have ever had absolutely no we've gone along lots of years of growing our own food without a greenhouse and this is not a huge space as far as greenhouse goes buddy it's gonna get us quite a bit of food we have produced before as far as veggies you know greens leafy greens in a space like that you know 150 to 200 pounds on a season of leafy greens in that space so so it's a big spot and next year because now the beds are prepped right we'll get even a better jump than this year season extension yeah so we're doing that and you and I are gonna have a seed planting date tonight yeah we are you starting the green yeah you know our main crop starts in the end of the starting trace all right yeah I'm excited that's good it's good to see things start popping up oh yeah getting our hands in the soil and of course you've already got a lot of perennial starts for your medicinal and culinary garden absolutely I'm gonna I think I have eight trays of starts going right now I counted 576 individual starts cells I'm counting how this one start right in your program yeah and they are annuals and perennials makes it both of them there but it's a good start and some of them are getting up and getting pretty big and now I just need to get the ground ready to get those guys into as soon as I can down there and a lot of this is permanence this is an annual gardening like you said there's some annuals but a lot of this is permanence yes as far as medicine yeah I'm treating medicine for the family yeah yeah and culinary or culinary herbs so yeah that'll be good once you get those in then hopefully you're not starting them over again yeah a big sigh they're very cool and exciting to just see life starting to pop up out of the ground absolutely we got some kitten speaking a new life that first first I think animals born on this property for us I think to us we just got some some barn cats yeah some babies I think there were three kittens born yesterday morning yeah kids are so excited we're giving mama some space just to recover a little bit right now before the kids can get out there but we're all really excited about kids okay so do we have a question we do we've got a lot of good questions we've gonna just hit one right here and this is from Amanda Amanda you you sent us a bunch of good questions and we're gonna try to cover them over time here and there but this ties into today's subject your upbringing did you grow up on a farm no no what and when did you decide to tackle this lifestyle and what was your lifestyle like before homesteading has there ever been a time where you ate kraft mac and cheese that's a great question well I think I think we need to qualify her nose because well neither of us grew up on a farm or a homestead we both had elements of it so my mom gardened from the time I can remember there was a point where she had chickens but when I was very little but I can't remember that but I have a picture of me in with all the chicks of my mom's when she was doing that and she has always made home raised a home-cooked meal so I definitely had a lot of the elements present right yeah yeah and I definitely had influence to my grandma always garden a little bit no not I mean not any sustenance gardening but always garden a little bit and she specifically got me out there when I was little and that just gave me a love for having my hands in the soil yeah and dad always managed property in a mountain somewhere and often it was around cattle and livestock okay and then of course I worked on a cattle ranch for seven years of my 20s and we both grew up in the mountains and around livestock and again a lot of touch-and-go so we didn't we weren't really living a homestead lifestyle right but we had a lot of influence yeah we had a lot of elements of that and certainly I was around horses a lot growing up yeah so we had a lot of that but not really anything like what we're doing right yeah and yes there was a time when we ate a lot of Kraft Mac and Cheese and Top Ramen don't bro scott mhairi oh yeah oh it's embarrassing how much Top Ramen we ate we were shoestring budget broke and yeah food seemed expensive its food so it except it wasn't that in it I think it is more so now right so yeah we hit a lot of Kraft Mac and Cheese a lot of Top Ramen yeah yeah and sprinkled in a few goodies in there in the early days yeah and even then we were trying to grow something on the balcony of our little apartment very even way back then yeah yeah and as for now do we ever eat macaroni and cheese occasionally yes absolutely and now what's funny is you know the kids will beg me in fact this morning they were saying could we please have Cheerios one day for breakfast like it's this exciting thought that one day maybe mama would let them eat something like cereal for breakfast so we don't do it very often but usually it's some sort of a goodie which is a great relief and break for a moment too well and life does get pinched for us while we provide most a high percentage of what we consume in preserved foods meats fresh veggies life's life gets nice behind we get under the gun and we need quick fixes so there they're here yeah you know and just happens okay but I try if I'm really prepared then it's all of these foods up here that become our Mac you know our mac and cheese oh yeah because we've got you I'm seeing I don't think you guys see it a lot of the the prepared foods all appear but they're all you know dinner's ready to dump in heat and they're actually ready faster than a mac and cheese is with less work so that's my main thing that's the main go-to but sometimes you run low and and like you were saying sometimes that's a treat to the kids yeah and I'll craft Mac and she's who I don't know I I loved it as a kid I don't think I ever got sick of that so yeah man don't we do and did we get all of that question well how did we decide to tackle that life stuff there's multiple questions there and that kind of leads right why do we homestead why why did why did we get started on this journey going from some country experience and touch and go to hey we want to live it we want to produce most of our food we want to live on the land we want to work with the animals full-time you know what got us going there so so let's just use that as musician young to our but what where was it that we decided to start home setting I don't know that we ever made a decision let's start homestead how you don't know but for me there's a moment in time that I remember I think that set us on a journey before homesteading or growing all of our own food was really even part of the picture but and it revolves around health mmm yeah yeah dude I don't know well it was our first doctor visit for our first saw yeah and yeah we're jumping in and we were getting well baby before and waiting to go get a vaccination for a child don't the first baby and I remember so clearly the nurse the doctor came in did the exam and said okay the nurse is gonna come in with two shots and give him two shots and he walked out and the nurse came in I've got a screaming baby he was getting shots and he gets three shots and we went home that night and I thought well you know I didn't think a lot of it the moment you're dealing with this baby who's screaming and crying and I got home and he got terribly feverish she got very sick that night and so I called up and I said could could we have given him an extra shot well they only had two shots on record and it was a wake-up call to us that we don't know what just happened so it made us really go back and start research so you made us think it just made us a start asking questions that maybe we hadn't asked before yeah yeah and that really began an interest in health mm-hmm and understanding what are we consuming what's he doing to us and you know and then that naturally well what can we do about it as we were learning and you know vaccinations was just a part of it but started you know learning about medicine about food well healthy food well you know what is the food that we're consuming and that really started a health journey yes as a new parent is concerned about you know our children yeah absolutely wanting to make sure that we were well researched and making good decisions yeah so as that grows we came to the conclusion that we wanted to eat very cleanly I mean we'd say organically today I'd say that organically in the organic sense not the certified sense right but yeah and as we looked at that Wow that is expensive cute to live and buy all of your groceries is organically as you can that that's that's hard to obtain it is especially as you start getting a family you're feeding children you're feeding more children you know and you start looking at the prices and some of those top-line you know what do you call those dynamic accumulator foods where you're really the toxin accumulators where you're talking the meats and the fats and the milk you know that's really where you've got this heavy toxin load sitting in your food and those are really expensive if you're gonna buy those organic or raw or grass-fed or whatever it is that you're looking at and it just gets kind of out of a normal household budget price range yeah really quickly actually no it does and then you want to look at the vegetables behind that and all of that and it's just it's hard to do so we started going well we can grow some of this in our backyard yeah and like a lot of people we started with his bigger garden as we could put in the backyard chickens mm-hmm you know yeah and it was a small backyard it was not acreage like we're on now it was enough to do a quite a large flock of meat birds though we fit those I remember that first that wasn't our first time butchering chickens bye-bye it was the first time in a long time in our little backyard we tried to butcher like 75 I think chickens meat birds that we had raised by hand and we were inexperienced and I was in the first trimester but I didn't see with a baby and I'm already so sick yeah that didn't go well no that was actually pretty rough experience I was done with chickens for a while yeah but that but that was part of the journey and and it's grown from there into developing more and more resources you know having larger land larger resources to produce more of our own food but a whole lot of other values have also grown out of that Jurnee right kind of pretty quickly we're natural so why else do we homestead so number one I think for us right now is health yeah and it's always been number one and we have seen that play out over the years as we just see how healthy and vibrant our children are our own health generally is all right we are amazingly blessed really are when it comes to health issues outside we actually haven't had a lot of broken bones or major injuries either but those are really the only reasons we've you know had to you know go absolutely and we're very blessed in that yeah I think I've been rewarded for for the work yeah yeah so another reason that that I think we just started experiencing and realizing as we were raising our own food with a healthy focus as we started working together and things started happening of course we all we all want a healthy family and want everybody to get along and have a good community and our family and around us but we started to see that as we were working together the way we wouldn't have other ways and so that value I think a family working together yeah the relationship strength really grew by working alongside each other and you know there's an element here where some of the things that we do in our homesteading life is just hard work it's dirty it's not nice it's uncomfortable strong so maybe a lot of a lot this mean it's not fun but it just gives you that opportunity to kind of struggle and have small successes together as a family and it's huge when you can see the rewards of that on the other side like wow we just remember how how much hard work that was being out there and doing that but then here we are at the table all enjoying the rewards of it and so I think that's been really big for us is just the closeness of our family by going through that yeah building those family ties and I was just reading an article that was talking about a family having a vision you know the kids having a vision knowing they're going somewhere but also having a vision you know together and how much that does for family bonding for the kids growing and having a sense of place and working towards a common goal yeah you know and in part that's struggling towards a common goal and then experiencing both failures and successes yeah definitely I would definitely say that that's true and then as you're doing that as you're working together with a family you're spending more time working together as a family you also end up with more opportunities to help out your community around you as a family yeah and that ends up giving the kids these really lot closer ties to their community and to the society around them than they would have otherwise absolutely and I think that's been really important to us and to the kids to just know kind of where they fit into the community yeah it's become really special yeah so that really has and right naturally from that is the character development yeah that we see that comes naturally from living this lifestyle yeah and that as we saw that in the younger kids and as we were growing and deciding where we were gonna go with all of this you really see a lot of natural character building because you are struggling mm-hm there are different things you are problem-solving you are having to persevere you know just just going out and feeding the animals in the winter yeah is you know teaching you to keep on going and that's just one example that well and each person has to develop a lot of responsibility right because you know if that one child doesn't get out there and take care of the chickens yeah mom mom and dad are watching and making sure everything's getting done but if they don't take care of it there's a consequence with the chickens right they're not taken care of they're not fed they don't do well whatever that is and so you really have this responsibility growth in people and you know it doesn't take being out shopping very much to see the lack of that in our general society right now the kids are not in a position where they're having to step up and take responsibility yeah and so it's a real blessing to see this kind of lifestyle yield that you know our children well and I think with that there's a sense there's not the same sense of belonging you know kids don't how the same purpose we're in our home you know this is not I mean obviously it's Josh and Carolyn directing running things but we would say we couldn't do what we do without everybody absolute together and so everybody is contributing and people know if they don't you know if they're not if they're not successful if they're not doing their job yeah you know it's it's it's a challenge for all of us yeah but by doing what they're doing they are fulfilling a purpose and I know that they know that they bring a lot of value to the family yeah talk about that self-esteem yeah oh absolutely because somebody's telling them oh we like you you're you're good we tell them that too but that's not the basis for their self-esteem it's because they realize that they are valuable important members of the team that's getting something done yeah for everybody's greater good and that just builds a lot of that just personal worth right I think that's huge up in the kids it is so so character building and and then skills just building life skills homesteading is not about digging in the dirt and just feeding animals yeah at least not the way we approach it right there is a huge diversity of skills and it's one of the reasons we approach it from a modern sense yeah we'll get into in a minute you know get decreasing our dependence on modern systems there's a lot of things we would like to do away with but yet we're still in a modern world and we still need to engage so in our you know view of homesteading and building skills you're building skills everywhere from learning how to grow things nurture animals to fix equipment and even you know technical computer skills and coding and different things as the kids get older that are just a part of all of our experience and it's not gonna go away yeah you know having the basic skills to just take care of yourself it's kind of huge really and it's like just cooking right being able to cook being able to take care of things is so such great skills to have but then those over writing skills of thinking through problems the problem-solving skills the okay this piece of equipment just broke how do I fix it and have to go figure that out them and go work through that right that's just those are skills that they're gonna be able to use in any anywhere where they end up in the world even if they end up sitting in a you know high-rise office somewhere is their job they're gonna be able to use those skills and that is just really important to us that they have those basic life skills that says yeah I can figure this out well in loving to learn yeah it's part of what happens in that you know in and we live in a wonderful age really that you know because of the internet because of some of the resources we have you can research and solve a lot of problems that would have been a lot more challenging without that resource man takes longer yeah and you know we can look at that as a negative and oh you know you're just glued to the computer but on the other side when used as a proper tool it's a phenomenal resource that really excels the kids and their love for learning finding out that they can go find pieces of information and then apply it and Excel and fix a problem that they couldn't have fixed otherwise I mean I've got you know our oldest son Tristan now fixing things that I frankly I don't even have the time to go research and do everything you know I can give him some guidance and say hey if you want to look it up and he's solving problems that are past things that I would even tackle not because it's not possible but because we can only focus on so much you know and to see his success on that and you know it's many other kids too as they come along that's really really cool really and that's applying that to life whatever they do whether they adopt some of this lifestyle or go out there learning to love to learn they're learning to problem-solve and they're learning a diversity of skill sets that can be applied in the world and I want to bring in one more skill set that maybe doesn't get talked about so much in homesteading world but is huge for us is that a homesteading lifestyle gives a lot of opportunity to learn a business yeah entrepreneur especially for us an entrepreneurial mindset right and our kids are always like how can I sell these eggs how can I raise more vegetables to be able to sell at the farmers market it just gives so much opportunity to develop those skills that's a wonderful thing well and that leads right into increasing independence a certain level of Independence and this is not about self-sufficiency as it's used today none of us are self-sufficient we all need each other we don't really want to be no I'm sorry you're on an island you're on a cave by yourself and so that's really not the goal but do we want more self-sufficiency do we want more independence do we want to decrease our dependence on modern industrial systems which is part of a big part of what motivates us absolutely yeah and what are some of those modern industrial systems that's kind of a hot topic word right there yeah you know so well obviously food the food system is a big window we and the medical system and they go hand in hand we have a gigantic medical system because we have a food system that isn't producing basic nutrition right you know and so if you're not putting your your your dollars whether it's through homesteading or buying quality food somewhere along the line you're putting more dollars in the medical system and and that's why it's so big today right yeah and so that's a big one so breaking our dependence on the food system and they're certainly lessening them yeah because I would not make an argument that everybody needs to provide their own food no and we still go to the grocery store I know you guys look at these shelves and think oh they're producing everything we go to the grocery store and we try we're actually able to go a lot less and buy a lot less than we used to but but you know it's not that we're a hundred percent self-sufficient but we're saying we're not even trying to be a hundred percent sausages but we do want to get less dependent on the industrial system and rely both more on ourselves and our community and so we want to see more local producers right you know we want to be able to produce more and provide surplus to the community eventually and we want to support others that are providing surplus and that starts to become a healthier system that creates more independence and less dependence on the food system so what's one that you well you brought up the medical system but that's another one just by growing so much of our own we have really been able to decrease our dependence on the medical system and again it's not that we would never go to a doctor never use a hospital we we don't have that queen of view there's a certain level that we're very thankful for in a medical system there's certain things that our medical system is very very good at and that we absolutely need and they've saved family members lives more ample times an extended family and you know we're really thankful for that but we have been able to decrease the doctor's visits to decrease talk to almost none we've been able to substantially decrease the emergency room visit just by having basic first-aid knowledge and being prepared with some herbal remedies so just being able to reduce our dependence on that medical well and that parts of that medical system don't function as well and don't serve us as well and so we want to have a little bit of Independence there and deal with those issues first if we can in a healthy way so quickly let's talk about a few other ones we've got the education system is another big system absolutely and it's you know it is more and more producing a mindset of a follower mindset yeah just fit into the end of the box and fit into your little spa instead of an independent thinking person and unfortunately a lot of us humans don't fit into the box so that we don't know that means that a lot of people are getting kind of left out and marginalized and not helped out where they really need to be helped in order to be their best ER and to gain the skills so and so then you have your other where I know we're getting down on time you have your other ones that everybody think of when think of you know with off-grid or independence in your electrical system your water system oil and yeah those were not so quick to abandon yet they're helping us build independence in other ways and it's building the skills to do without those in our mindset that yeah eventually we would love to take the power lines down we have our own water we're very fortunate here for that and so but it's it's moving towards that continually yeah yeah and because those systems can go down mm-hmm they actually can go down very easily and so we absolutely want to be prepared to live without them and you know and maybe eventually just live without them permanently yeah that would be great and also you know even if they don't go down in some big massive you know the end of the world as we know it events there are moments where you can just say look we we'd like to be able to live without paying the power bill this month for whatever reason that is whether it's a job loss or you know whatever the circumstance is is having the skills to be without that yeah and that's important to us yeah it really is so um we're getting out of time and there's a there's a little bit of a tour of why we do what we do we'd love it if you guys would comment and either email us or share a little bit with us about why why are you on your journey yeah yeah and yeah and you know where are the similarities and maybe there's some things that people are thinking out there that we even we didn't cover or we're not that yeah yeah and um okay so next week we're gonna take a turn a little bit yeah and we're gonna get into the garden and garden planning I think all right planning yeah kind of dive into how we think about approaching a garden planning it obviously for the result of getting food into the home and into the pantry that's right so we will look forward to seeing you guys on the next pantry chat we'll see you soon [Music] you

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 22,292

Keywords: Homesteading, Homesteading Family, why homestead, why we homestead, homestead health, healthy homesteading, health, homesteading skills, industrial agriculture vs sustainable agriculture, homesteading lifestyle

Id: h4lppggU9Tc

Length: 29min 58sec (1798 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2019