You've been Dying to ASK

hi everybody welcome back to the homestead my name is Sarah this is Kevin and we decided today that we were going to do something fun and we asked you guys through our YouTube community tab through Facebook and through Instagram if you guys have any questions for us so we could just sit down and have kind of a casual conversation and answer some of your burning questions I know some channels will do this through a live stream but because of where we live and the terrible internet service we have out here live streams are not an option for us so as of right now this is the best way we can do it to interact with you guys is to ask these questions and try to answer them for you so we're just gonna jump right in and start looking through some of the questions and things and we have not rehearsed any of this no we hope that it all comes out ok we're in the shower garden today and just to be real candid it rained and I think that now my butt is completely wet yeah we put cushions on these seats to make them a little more comfortable but that also means that we should probably remember to take them off when it rains and we're just not good at that yeah you know I skimmed through some of the questions earlier just to make sure people were actually asking us questions and we're thankful for all of you who asked questions and we had some kind of technical questions some about family some funny some serious so we're just going to try to address as many as we can and hope for the best and hope that you guys just enjoy having some of this kind of extra information about us right so the first question that we picked to answer is are our kids going to live the same lifestyle that we live as homesteaders or are they planning on you know going to college and getting careers and kind of going the more traditional route we don't know exactly yet both of our girls do want to go to college and we will encourage them to go to college our oldest daughter Grace who is going to be a junior this here just took her AC tees this summer the very first time Steen and she got a 29 which is a very good score on her AC tees she's hoping to take them again and maybe even do better she's already way smarter than I am so I don't know how you could possibly do better but she's hoping to do better but she is also considering the Air National Guard as an opportunity after high school so a lot of big decisions coming up quickly in her life right grace is interested in becoming an English teacher probably a high school English teacher but also is very interested like Kevin said an arrant near Air National Guard not only to help pay for her college but also to serve her country and I really respect that grace is so brave she'll get up in front of anybody to sing she's not afraid to jump out of an airplane or anything like that so I really respect that and I think that it would do she would do really well in the Air National Guard now Samantha she is 12 and she is interested also in going to college to be a teacher probably elementary school I would say right so at this point that's what she's most interested in now we have let both the girls know that we would really like for them to end up close enough by to still see them very often right to be a part of their lives as grown-ups and to be a part of their grandchildren's lives so we really hope that they do that right we're also hoping to continue to some degree they're growing and raising a food for our family and they would like to continue helping with that so that they can benefit in that but we've also let them know that as we age we won't be able to do all of that by ourselves but we would love for them to come home and help us with harvesting canning butchering preserving those kinds of things so that the whole family can still benefit from this lifestyle right even though they maybe don't want to live it to the degree that we are now they very much appreciate everything that we do they've grown very accustomed to home raised and home made food they really don't like eating out they really don't like buying things at the store because they just weren't raised with those things so yeah we're hoping that at least even if they go off for a while maybe they'll come back to this lifestyle or at least some of this lifestyle right we've heard from several of you about some technical things like what camera do we use what editing software do we use and kind of how we got into YouTube and why we do YouTube so we want to just address that because we don't really talk about equipment and things like that very often so the camera that we use now is a Canon m50 with a rode videomic it's a very nice setup it'll probably be what we use for a very long time it wasn't cheap but it's definitely not you know you can spend a lot more but I think it does a very good job for the types of videos that we do and for a long long time the editing software that we used was iMovie we have a Mac computer but we just recently switched over and it's called Final Cut Pro right and that's what we're using now when we first started on YouTube though we started with just recording videos on an old iPhone that we had then we graduated to a camera that Sarah's dad gave us for free then we purchased our we purchased our first camera which was a canon g7x and then we no graduated to the camera that we have now as you know we don't like to spend money unless we have to so we graduate gradually moved up as we started to do a little bit better on YouTube we bought nicer equipment and hopefully now this camera will last us a very long time and in a nutshell we started doing YouTube as a way to show our family what we were doing when we left the big city it's kind of evolved since then and we started doing five videos a week for two over two years we have five videos every week and then just recently as you know we've come down to three videos per week but I really do think that that consistent schedule of five a week every week on the same day and now switching to three days a week on the same days that consistency we think really helped our progress and our subscriber growth and our views so the next question is do we still have bees and that's kind of a sore subject this spring as you know for those of you have been following us last fall we got a beehive we kind of got it unexpectedly because someone at church who had bees got stung had an anaphylactic reaction and so we got it kind of abruptly before we had time to learn a lot about it so we got the bee hive we kept them alive all winter they made it through the winter they were doing great we thought great you know everything was going to be fine early this spring they swarmed we were working out in the garden actually and we saw the swarm we caught the swarm and I was able to put it into a smaller what they call a nuke box and I thought everything was going to be great and then about a week later we were gone at the farmers market and they must have swarmed again because we came home from the market and all of the bees were gone so we're not exactly sure what happened or what we did wrong but I am going to be going to spend some time with my friend Ben down in Arkansas at vwfamily farm if you watch their channel he is a great beekeeper he's going to teach me everything that I need to know and hopefully we will try again with bees probably next summer we had a question about is there something that you have tried and failed at and you would do again when you have more knowledge and I think bees are exactly that we would definitely want to do them again we need a lot more information we're excited about what we can learn from Andrea from vwfamily farm and we will have been bees again right yeah I thought I could learn what I needed to from a book but I'm really a hands-on learner so going down to spend some time with Ben will be a big help I know he's going to be able to you know give me all the knowledge that I need we also had a question from the same person that just asked so in previous and that's actually Jessica from Three Rivers homestead she has a really awesome Instagram account guys go check her out she asked if there's anything that we've absolutely failed on that we will never do again or if we had an experience on the homestead that we'll never do again and we actually did a video about the animals that we would never do again for sure it would be cats on the homestead Ginny's on the homestead and geese homestead I would say top of that list would be Ginny's yeah I did not like the guineas we thought you know people warned us and said you know they're so noisy you're gonna hate I mean we thought those are just people who aren't used to a lot of yeah we don't mind the roosters we don't mind any of that it's not gonna be a problem the guineas make a ton of noise all day and all night and that it was just too much for us so well in the cat's we got three kittens from a friend and brought them home and they were pretty scared at first and so we thought it'd be a good idea to tame them up we tamed them up too much they wanted to come in the house they wanted to board the school bus with the kids they would follow Kevin out to the woods to go hunting they would dart try to dart in the house all the time they would take off with the fish after we've got went fishing it was just a nightmare yeah so as much as we wanted rodent killers right cats didn't work out for us on homestead so the next question is how many canning jars do we own I think I'll let Sara answer this one oh my gosh you know I'll be really honest with you that I'm a cannon I'm a jar canning jar hoarder I just have tons and tons of jars and when I go to a garage sale or a rummage sale or a church sale and I see boxes of jars i buy them and I buy them all I think that since we've been here I've had four or five giant hauls of jars and we moved here with a ton of jars so how many we have I have no idea we have so many jars probably a thousand or more I have no idea we have so many years a lot of them you know we've never used I mean they've been used they're ones that we buy but we just store them in our barn there you know some of them are just gonna be for emergencies you know but you know or you know as the kids get older if we're doing a lot more canning to send home with the kids or for the grandkids it'll be nice to have all of those and so you know jars are expensive when you buy them in the regular store so whenever we see a good deal on them we pick them up whether we need them or not well I'm always afraid that I'm gonna run out like what if we have so many tomatoes what if we find so many blackberries what if we have a huge crop of sweet corn and green beans and what if I run out and what if we can all of the deer and what if we can all of the chickens we just need all the jars right what if suddenly everybody in the state of Missouri wants a canning jar she has one for him all right so the next question is how do we handle Japanese beetles here on the homestead because they've become a huge problem I think this person said on the East Coast but they're a big problem pretty much across the country now they've really spread so we actually did a video about this not long ago so you can go watch that but it gave you kind of an overview here as well so the first thing we do is we use the Japanese beetle traps the pheromone traps but we put them very far away from the plants that the Japanese Japanese beetles are are attracted to so our main problem here is on our orchard trees our orchard is kind of right in the middle of our property so we use two Japanese beetle traps and we put them one in each corner of our property which is probably 300 yards or so from where the actual trees are right and we we put the traps above a bucket of soapy water so that they go right through the trap and drown in the water because we have so many of them that those little traps they don't really hold that many beetles and we could fill up one of those traps in 24 hours right so we just Kevin puts a wire at the bottom wires it open and puts it just like an inch above a bucket of soapy water they fall in there die and it works really well and you never have to empty them right so the second thing that we do is we use a neem oil and soap solution to spray a mist on the plants that we want to repel them away from right the neem oil then is soaked into the leaves so it doesn't just like hang on top of the plants it soaks into the leaves and it deters the bugs not just beetles but the bugs from eating it because it doesn't taste very good so those are the two ways that we are combating the Japanese beetles and so far for the past two years it's done a good job well it hasn't kept every single Japanese beetle off of our orchard trees are still some bite marks here and there but they're not completely defoliated like we have experienced in previous years right yeah it does overall it does a good job I would say it probably decreased them by about 90% yeah I would have said 75 to 90% yeah the next question has to deal with time management how do we get it all done do we have a daily schedule do we have a planner monthly like how do we just get it all done right there are lots of things that we do but sometimes we feel like we're not we're still not getting enough done but in general there are a lot of factors that play into our schedules right our morning chores and our evening chores are always the same those are pretty much they never change we get up we do our morning chores you know and then we go about our day it's the stuff in the middle that we try to have a plan for typically sir and I will you know talk the night before or what kind of a plan over the weekend will kind of make a plan for the following week but when you're living this life you need to be flexible nothing ever just goes the way it's supposed to you know be you know you may be all ready to go out and pick in the garden it starts to rain or in animal escapes or I mean there's just so many variables you know this past I've been trying to work on that cow pasture area putting in T posts and then we had a stretch where I mean it was you know almost a hundred degrees the actual temperature over a hundred degrees with the with the heat index which you know and then here it's so humid that I mean I was only able to get done maybe a third of what I could have gotten done in nicer weather so a lot of it has to revolve around the weather and our schedule right you know we have we have days that we harvest for the farmers market we have days that we film videos for YouTube and in between there we try the best that we can to manage the projects that we have going on the harvesting canning preserving butchering those kinds of things so we don't have a hard and fast schedule right we just do the best that we can but throughout the year you know we have we have schedules that kind of rule over the year right the months that we we buy seeds or get seeds we plant them and start them we plant them in the garden then we harvest can every year is basically the same when it comes to the big picture items so it seems like every year there's like some something that comes up that just throws off the schedule and you have to be willing to roll with those punches actually we just had something like that happen today so we heat our house strictly with wood in the winter and - so far we have not been chopping enough of our own firewood what we do chop down trees we save as much firewood as we can but it's not enough to get us through the entire winter so there has been a company that we've bought firewood from for the last couple years and you know we'll just call them they'll deliver it we'll stack it for winter and we're ready to go well we just found out today when I called them for this year's delivery that because of health problems they've gone out of business and they're not going to be able to supply us with firewood now this puts us way behind the game on firewood luckily I have a little bit left from last year I have a couple cords left from last year which will get us through a good part of the beginning of the winter but basically now instead of getting back to work on the cow pasture area I need to focus my attention on getting firewood for our family if we don't have firewood that's a big deal we do have propane and we do have a furnace in the house we never even light the pilot light on the furnace because it costs so much to run and it just goes through so much propane so we need to get firewood so I'm probably going to have to go and buy a log splitter within the next little while even though it's an expense we weren't planning on and and there are some trees that we've known need to come down that we were going to wait probably until next year and I'm gonna have to start chopping those down yet this summer so schedules change things happen and as much as it would be really nice to have a perfect schedule for every day and every week and every month every year it just doesn't work out and we struggle with that just like all of you the next question is do we attend or speak at or travel to other festivals and conferences besides the Baker Creek festival here in Mansfield like the mother news conference and those kinds of things so the short answer to that question is no we do not we have been asked to travel to other conferences that are pretty far away from where we live but because we're very committed to this lifestyle we're committed to growing our own food we're committed to you know being on the homestead as much as we can right we just have a lot of responsibilities here so we just cannot travel for anything that takes us home away from home for more than I'd say not not even overnight but like a day trip right we love speaking at Baker Creek and manse area which is about 45 minutes from us right and there is one conference in September that we will be going to it's about two hour drive for us so we can go there after chores come back before chores and that is the Ozarks homesteading festival in Neosho Missouri near Joplin we're speaking in the afternoon there we'd love to join you but I know it probably seems odd that you don't see us all over the place lots of homesteaders have the ability to travel and go to conferences right you know either you know they have people that can watch over their place or they don't have the daily you know milking and those kinds of things but you know we intentionally chose this lifestyle we chose to be where we're at we chose to be in a place where we don't have relatives and we're just we're home bodies and we need to stay here and take responsible responsibilities for our homestead right not to mention in my old life as a salesperson I did a lot of traveling and I really like being at home yeah I feel like I just missed way too much when I'm not here so being at home is a good place to be so the next question which I thought was really a nice question is about the dishes that we use and where did they come from because they thought that they were so pretty yeah the dishes that we use every day on the homestead they were my grandma's dishes and she got them as a wedding present in 1945 so every time we would make a trip from our house in Wisconsin down to her house in Iowa for Christmas or Thanksgiving or Easter dinner we would eat on those dishes as a family and when she passed away I was in oh it was right after we got married right we were actually living in southern Texas yeah no one else in the family wanted her dishes and so I I was able to inherit those dishes from my grandma I don't know much about them there I feel that they're absolutely beautiful and I'm so happy to use them I didn't want to just pack them up in a box and put them in a storage barn and never use them and never see them so we use them everyday right to eat on the meals that we serve for our family so it's really actually very special to me and it means a lot that some of the ladies out there notice notice them and comment on how pretty they're because they they mean a lot to me so the question that we're going to end on is about grocery shopping and if we have any kind of guilty pleasure that we buy at the grocery store because you guys I hope you know that we really don't buy much at the grocery store we raise all of our own meat we raise a lot of our own vegetables and that kind of thing and for the most part we really do without a lot of things on the palms we usually just buy ingredients if anything so I like flour and sugar we only grocery shop once every six weeks and we don't even fill an entire cart when we go grocery shopping right we used to do once a month grocery shopping and then we realized that at the end of that month we didn't really need to go yet so we've stretched it out to every six weeks and so the one guilty pleasure that I allow us to buy and I know that we can make them at home but it just seems faster and I really like to buy them is tortillas we buy flour tortillas and because we like our Mexican food we like our burritos we like quesadillas and so we buy burritos or we buy tortillas now I have a little bit of a confession that maybe Sarah doesn't even know about but when I go to Walmart by myself sometimes if you guys know what honey buns are there are only 50 cents and I know they're not good for you but I tend to have a lot of those rappers in my truck I was going to say it's not that much of a secret because you shove all the rappers on the side of the door it's not like everyday but it's not even every time I go to Walmart with those honey buns there's something about them they're pretty good I don't drive very often because we go everywhere together but occasionally when I Drive I get like a sticky part of my leg because I'll shut the door and the sticky part of the rapper will stick on my leg from the honey buns so sweetie you're not really hiding much oh but that's my guilty pleasure so you guys we couldn't answer all the questions but we had a good time we loved to hear what your questions were and we're glad that we got to sit down today and answer a few of them for you right if you enjoyed this let us know we'll try to do more of these in the future and you know we like to be able to share we're not trying to keep any secrets from you guys we like to share what's going on in our lives or things that we've learned or you know there's some things we just maybe sometimes don't think you guys are even interested in and that we read these questions everything oh they really do want to know about that yeah so thanks for stopping by today make sure if you're not subscribed yet you hit the subscribe button and share our channel with people you know who you think might enjoy what we're doing here and until next time guys thanks so much for stopping by the homestead take care and God bless god bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 113,924

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing, q&a, subscriber questions, homesteading questions, homesteading101, what is homesteading, family farm, farm family, organic gardening, organic gardeners

Id: hmAxvEJ_E4o

Length: 25min 50sec (1550 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 01 2019