Homesteading-ish

Today I'm talking with Troy at Homesteading-ish. You can follow on Facebook as well.

Homesteading-ish is a conference for new or current homesteaders.

"Do you want to learn how start your own homestead? Already have a homestead property and need some extra help? We're bringing the homestead community together. Real people, real life homestead experience, all in one place, learning and living out dreams."

Use coupon code HOMESTEAD24 to get $10.00 off admission price 

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Troy at Homesteading-ish. Tell me about Homesteading-ish. Why is it called that? So it's Homesteading-ish is kind of an acronym. It's homesteading in search of help. So the ish is an acronym.

00:29
And it was really, obviously the homesteading movements is really taken off here in the last several years and there's a lot of conferences and those things popping up. But here in West Virginia, we have not had one yet. So we thought, well, this will be a great opportunity to kind of do an inaugural conference here in the state. You get in these mountainous states, homesteading becomes a little bit more of a challenge in certain areas. So we thought, well, there's a lot of people in

00:58
It's a rural state, so there's a lot of people that already kind of have that. You know, we raise a backyard garden, we do that kind of stuff. But what can we do to encourage them to maybe look deeper into a homesteading lifestyle? So that's kind of why we thought in search of help. So you're kind of already homesteading, but you're also in search of help. You're looking for that extra push or some of those new ideas.

01:22
Awesome. I didn't even think about the fact that the ish was an acronym. I'm not with it today. So define your version of homesteading for me because I have talked to so many people in the last year who have different definitions. So what's yours? Yeah, so that's a great question, Mary, because it is all over the board. So I personally have a social media presence and talking about

01:53
for goodness, probably eight years now. And I still get people saying, wait a minute, you're not homesteading. The Homesteading Act of 1863 was, you know, that's done, nobody's doing that anymore. And it's like, well, okay, maybe we need to call it modern homesteading, or as my grandma would say, well, it's just everyday life because that was rural life for her. So I think it means different things to different people, but I look at it as taking more responsibility for

02:20
your livelihood when it comes to food, when it comes to income, when it comes to security, when it comes to just keeping the lights on type of thing. I think it's a pretty broad brush that we can paint with, but it'll mean a little bit of different things for different people. Somebody said, well, you're not really homesteading if you don't have this many acres, or you're not really homesteading if you don't have this many animals, or if you don't at least grow this much percentage of the food that you consume.

02:49
And I don't think there's any specific parameters that we need to put on that. I see people, I've got a friend, Harold Thornbrough, my goodness, that guy's homesteading on like two acres and he puts away more food than people on 10 acres do. So I don't think there's limitations that could be set on that, but I think it does have some fluidity for people depending on what their motivations are. Okay.

03:14
And you just made me really think about this because I haven't really defined it for myself either. And as you were talking, I was like, so the only people who aren't doing homesteading are those who don't actually do anything themselves. Like they don't cook for themselves. They don't do their own laundry. They don't grow anything. You know, if they don't have any self-sustainability skills, then they are not a homesteader. That's how I would define it. Yeah. And I think there has to be a conscious effort. Again,

03:41
I don't think my grandma, obviously, she didn't call it home studying back then, but if you came back and said, are you trying to be kind of push against the cultural norm in what you're doing when it comes to your food and your income and how you raise your family, all that type of stuff, you'd say, well, no, no, this is everyday life for us. So you fast forward now to our generation and say, what's everyday life? Well, everyday life is kind of a nine to five. It's a...

04:11
commute to an office, it's a majority of the population living either urban or suburban. And so home setting would be, well, we're kind of pushing against that. We're deliberately, instead of going to fast food restaurants all the time or doing an Uber Eats or necessarily working a nine to five, or maybe when I get home and my weekends are spent golfing or doing something else, you're saying, I want to do some of these other things. I want my hobbies to be.

04:40
related to this more self-reliant lifestyle. Yes, exactly. That's what I was getting at. Okay, so this conference thing that you're gonna be doing, I'm very excited for you. I will not be in attendance. I am too far away and I am too broke to fly or drive right now. But I'm really excited about it because it's, I'm like a huge fan of this whole lifestyle because we do it, our friends do it.

05:09
And it's not like we have to do it, but we really enjoy it. So what is the conference? Tell me the dates, tell me what's gonna be happening. Okay, so what we're doing is September the 13th and 14th, which is a Friday and Saturday. We are trying to jam as much information into those two days as possible without people screaming time out. But we wanna be sensitive to the fact that an overnight stay is expensive no matter where you go.

05:37
So we're trying to cram all that together in those two days. The event is in Charleston, West Virginia, which is the capital of our state. And it's actually at the convergence of three interstates. So it is geographically beneficial. You're not going to come a long way. You're not gonna have to go, you know, come to town and then drive an hour out some country road to find the venue. So there's a benefit there.

06:04
But also, we've got an airport right there. So if people do want to take the time to fly, then they can fly in and just a short Uber ride to the venue and also allows there, you know, there's a lot of hotels and areas and things like that in the area. So the venue has really allowed us to leverage some of our opportunities. So we were able to reach out.

06:28
to, you know, Joel Salatin, obviously he's kind of the top of the tier of people that you want to come to your conference. And Joel has been very helpful with us. I've met him in the past. We've talked in the past, so it was good to have that relationship and get him on board. And so we're looking at, okay, who from the homesteading YouTube influencer book writing type of thing can we get? And so we got Josh Draper from Stony Ridge Farmer.

06:58
Nathan Elliott from Out of the Woods, he's more of the sawmill forestry side. We've got Sean and Beth Doherty, they're not necessarily have a YouTube presence as much as they're just known in the homesteading circles as being experts in the field of, especially with livestock and those types of things. And of course, they're just across the river in Ohio. So there was some logic there. Chuck Lewis from Sheridan Park Farms, he brings a unique perspective from

07:28
from taking a homestead to more of a commercial farm level, but still doing all that slow food, regenerative agriculture approach to it. So, and then Red Tool House, which is my YouTube channel, we kind of have this rural Appalachian-based homesteading approach to things. But then, so the flip side of that, we then said, well, okay, let's reach out, because our partners in this, this is actually, I'm a co-host with the...

07:57
Capital Conservation District here in our area. So that's an entity that of course has resources and access to grants and those types of things and they can get over into more of academia. And so there it's become a really neat mashup of some of our speakers we have coming in. We have people that are coming that have these credentials at the end of their name that are gonna be talking about organic farming, they're gonna be talking about

08:24
agritourism, they're going to be talking about, of course, beekeeping, all those type of things, but how to get certified and organic, herbalists that are talking about herbal medicines, finding mentorships or utilizing grants or utilizing NRCS money type of thing. So there's kind of this neat mashup of those that we say, well, kind of social media, do-it-yourself type of thing versus the academic side that's coming in. So...

08:52
we're going to have 36 different topics discussed by over 20, I think about 24 presenters is where we're at right now. Wow, that is a lot. Yeah. Okay. So is it going to be like, I don't want to say lecture because I have a terrible connotation about lectures. I don't love sitting in a classroom and listening to someone talk. So is it going to be an interactive kind of thing, or is it just going to be

09:21
Joel and all those other people standing in front of a group of people and just talking at them. How's it going to work? So there's going to be a balance of that, of course. When we get into some of these things, there's some things that are hands-on. So when the beekeepers are going to be here, obviously they're going to be outside doing that, you know, kind of showing their stuff. They're going to have frames. They're going to have hives that you can interact with. I'm looking down my list here. We even have...

09:49
somebody from the state department that's teaching chainsaw safety. So they're obviously going to be out running a chainsaw mill or cutting up some stuff. And there'll be also times that it does make sense. I'll be talking about pigs, raising pigs in the woods. And so I obviously can't load a 500 pound sow into my truck and bring it to the venue. So there'll be more of a

10:14
an inside room setting, but we'll be using video and PowerPoint, those type of things to kind of show the challenges with raising hogs in the woods on sloped land like we have here in West Virginia. It's a common challenge for all of us because of the topography. So it'll be a mashup of some will be inside, some will be in classroom setting as we kind of maybe get into some really detail-y stuff, and then others will be hands-on. We have a foraging expert that I think they're going to be taking people.

10:43
through the woods around the venue. The venue is actually a very large church that sits on 90 acres. So there's a lot of woods around it. So they'll actually be walking through the woods, kind of doing a live foraging demo. Okay, that sounds amazing. Speaking of Joel, I actually interviewed Joel back a few months ago for the podcast. And I was so excited to chat with him and I was scared to death because I didn't know how that was gonna go.

11:13
He is the nicest, most personable, down-to-earth guy ever. He reminded me a lot of my dad. And Joel's probably not that much older than I am, but he reminded me of my dad. And I really enjoyed chatting with him because he was so, I don't know, welcoming and open to the conversation. So I don't know if he's different in a teaching mode at something like this. Well, I would almost, I'd bet my lunch money.

11:43
that Joel is not, well, I know for a fact Joel's not coming with a PowerPoint presentation. Joel's not coming with a stack of notes. Joel's coming and you know, the really challenge, the only challenge we're going to have was just to have him keep the microphone close to his mouth. Because Joel's going to be one of those guys that just, he just eats, sleeps and drinks this stuff. I mean, he's, he's, my goodness, he's so sought after he's traveling the world now, speaking about, you know, what he calls his lunatic farming approach. And

12:12
And so it's just going to be, I think it's just going to be great to be able to get him to talk about, I'm trying to look at the lineup we have here for him. Goodness. I mean, he's like, Hey, I can speak about 16 different things. What do you want? Um, but just be talking about like, um, startup. So, uh, you know, a business startup, a lot of us with homesteading, like, okay, we need to, to be able to build this lifestyle. Obviously it takes capital investment to do so. So what are we doing on our homestead slash small farm that can generate

12:42
some income to help support our hobby and our desire to move in this direction. So Joel addresses those type of things. He's obviously written books about how to do pasture poultry and turn that into a $30,000 a year profit. And so he can speak into a lot of those things. So I think that's one of the things that Joel's going to bring to the table is just his ability to kind of ad-lib and even feel the crowd out and say, okay, maybe we go this direction or maybe we go that direction. But we're also going to be doing a roundtable on Friday night where we have...

13:11
Joel and a couple other keynote speakers where we can just do some open questions. That's something I'll be emceeing and just be able to kind of just let it go where the crowd wants to take it when it comes to discussing key things around homesteading. Awesome. I think Dawn is with us but her mic is shut off. So if you're there Dawn, if you want to turn your mic on and say hello, that would be great. I don't know if she can do it or not. So let's see.

13:41
Maybe not. I don't know. Okay. While we wait to see if Don's going to join us or not. So how did you decide to do this conference thing? Because this is not an inexpensive endeavor. I know it's not. So how is this, how is that going to work? Right. So there's no way in the world I could have done this on my own. In fact, capital conservation district approached me and said, hey, we want to do this. They, they have always been in an educational area.

14:11
That's kind of been their wheelhouse. And of course they partner with other organizations that are both local, state, and even at the federal level. And there's resources there to say, Hey, we want to educate people on agriculture. And what I think is just amazing that this, whatever you want to call it, regenerative agriculture, slow food, homesteading movement, all of those things are sometimes synonyms, sometimes they're, they're, they're close cousins to one another.

14:39
But it's getting the attention, it's getting input from larger and larger organizations. This is really, pardon the pun, this really has been a grassroots type thing. So when you see people like the Capital Conservation District has been here, been around forever, been trying to do great things in the area and have these resources, like, hey, let's take what we've been doing for a long time in education and just kind of...

15:04
not rebranded, but just kind of package it differently, partner with somebody in the homesteading community that has an audience and has some expertise in this area. And let's see if we can do a conference. And that's kind of the genesis of how we got to talk in. And being a small town, small state area, the director of the conservation district is a friend of mine. We've known each other for a while. So it was just a logical conversation to say, hey, can we?

15:33
Can we pull this off? Can we do something where you're bringing your audience this way and your type of people this way and we're bringing our expertise and our resources from this way? And can we put something together that people will really enjoy? So that's kind of where it started this about, almost a year ago now that we started this conversation and it's like, hey, yeah, I think this will work. Let's see what we can do. That's a pretty quick turnaround. I'm impressed.

16:02
It's funny to me how great ideas are born from friends sitting around, shooting the shit, going, what if we tried this? What if we tried that? Have we considered this? And there's usually coffee or an alcoholic beverage involved. So, yeah, it's, it's, I don't know, some of the best songs ever written, I think started with a beer and a couple of people sitting around with guitars. So, um,

16:32
So are you guys going to have anything about beekeeping? Did you say beekeeping? Yes. Yeah. We have some beekeepers. And then, what's neat, again, the Capital Conservation District, because of their expertise and their years of doing this type of stuff, they've got access to a lot of very educated people that have a lot of data to back this up. So I think of.

17:00
Some, you know, we'll take me for example. So, uh, you know, we're talking about sawmillings. Like Troy, what makes you an expert in sawmillings? Like, well, I'm not necessarily an expert. I've just had a mill for 20 years and I've had a lot of lumber on my place, but I'm, I don't do it for money. I don't have a commercial operation. I don't have, you know, not that there's are these certifications, but I don't have certifications, but when you look at what they bring to the table. Say, Hey, we've got somebody from academia that can come talk about pollinators.

17:28
So not only talking about the honeybee that everybody loves because of the product they produce, but then also when you look at, hey, if you really want your garden to flourish, you need to encourage pollinators to hang out. And this isn't just honeybees. And so we'll have a pollinator expert come in and this person has had a history of presenting, has all of this research and data to back stuff up because that's just the direction they're coming from. They have that resource. So we're gonna have...

17:55
Like I said, from that side of academia talking about pollinators and honey versus, like we've got some real estate agents that are coming to talk about, you know, how to find land because that's usually the biggest obstacle for a homesteader is, yeah, I recognize I want to get out of my postage stamp lots or I want to get out of my housing development that has a crazy HOA that doesn't allow me to do anything. They're going to freak out if I plant a garden in the front yard, much less put a chicken there.

18:25
So that next step, of course, is how do I find land? Well, land prices are just crazy right now. So getting a realtor to come and say, hey, when you're dealing with raw land versus postage stamp lot or developed land or those type of things that most realtors prefer to work with and understand to work with, then they're going to bring their expertise to the table. Say, no, here's how to navigate looking for raw land or what I like to encourage people to do is look for land disrepair.

18:53
land that's been trashed, unfortunately, and say, if you've got the elbow grease and the sweat equity that you can put into it, then you can really turn a diamond in the rough into something really neat. So having those different topics, people come in with those different topics, and we're trying to be as eclectic as possible. So we're looking at topic categories of land and land management, security, and we say security by kind of being around the infrastructure of your homestead, financial security, food security.

19:23
And then of course, just legitimate security, how to keep somebody from coming stealing all your stuff. We'll have a specific track that's kind of devoted directly to Appalachia. So Appalachia is, is, you know, hardwood forest is just, everybody has a tree around them type of thing, so benefits of that. And of course, as I already mentioned, some of the challenges of, of raising livestock or doing a garden when everything's on 20 to 30 degree slope.

19:47
And then maple production, our state is really doubling down into maple syrup production because we are far enough north that we get a hard enough winter to allow the sap to flow. But our maple trees, I mean, we rival New England when you look at the number of maple trees per square acre in West Virginia. So the state is dumping a lot of money and grants and those type of things, business

20:16
people producing maple syrup. And so we're having those people that are experienced in how to present that. They're the ones saying, hey, here's a grant that this organization is doing. This is how you do it. So they're coming to talk about that. But we'll also do organic tract. We're doing homesteading skills tract and then even urban homesteading for those people that say, I want to do this.

20:40
But I'm not ready to do it yet. Maybe it's a retirement thing I'm gonna do. So how can we do stuff in the backyard? How can we do stuff even on a terrace per se if if I just want to learn how to grow some of my own food And and stick my toe in the proverbial homesteading waters there Okay, if if I wasn't already doing homesteading, I would be going to this conference to learn about it It sounds so amazing. So two things

21:05
One has to do with how much it costs to attend the conference. And the first one I want to talk about is I actually interviewed our realtor a couple of months ago who found us our acreage. And she was really great about talking about the things that you, you won't think of if you're coming from an in town or suburb in place and then moving to acreage, like when we moved here, it, there was nothing, there was, there was no equipment because

21:34
the person that sold us the house and the land didn't sell us their equipment. So she was talking about how you really need to think about how you're going to heat your home. Because if the power goes out and you are miles away from people, you're probably going to want to have a secondary heating source, especially in Minnesota, because it gets really cold here. And she was talking about how you're going to need some kind of small tractor to mow your quote unquote lawn.

22:03
because you're going to have something you need to mow and it's not just going to be a push mower kind of situation. And you need to look at if you want to grow crops or if you want to have animals, how are you going to make that work? There's a lot of thinking and planning that goes into this. And she was so great about helping us find our place. So I'm really glad that you have a realtor or someone who's going to be there. That's fantastic. So having said all that.

22:31
How much is it gonna cost people to attend the conference? Well, right now, we just, at the time of recording this, we just hit kind of our last month of ticket sales. So, we kind of have our, what we consider a late registration. So, you're not too late, because ticket sales will go on all the way through the month of August. But right now, there's $75 a person, and that gets you both days. We do actually have an additional add-on if you want to do a meet and greet with Joel Salatin. It's like a...

23:00
a personal, small, intimate setting to hang out with him for the evening. I believe we may be sold out of those already. But yeah, it's $75, and I believe, and this is where I may be ill-prepared, I believe we even have a discount code. So I'm going to say on the record that I think there's a discount code, and then we can put it back on you to include that in your show notes. Oh, yes, absolutely. That's fine.

23:30
Okay, so I feel like $75 for two days is not terrible at all. I think that's actually really, really reasonable for what you're doing. Well, thank you. Yeah, and we're going to have some, we call it swag bags. That's the other neat thing of having an organization like the Conservation District coming along with those resources. You're not going to leave this conference empty handed. Your head obviously should be pounding with all the knowledge that's been poured into it.

23:58
but you're not gonna leave empty handed as well. There are going to be some takeaways that we think are gonna be beneficial or at least commemorative of your time with us. Yeah, if you leave empty headed from this, you didn't do it right. Exactly, exactly. Okay, so for people who can't or aren't going to go to this, do you have like a website or something where they can go and learn certain parts of this from you or is it just this homesteading-ish thing?

24:27
So this is so new that we are really cutting our teeth this year on it. And we've already learned so much about what we want to do different next year. But fortunately, the venue we're working with, like I said, is a really, really nice, very big church. Their auditorium can seat a thousand people in that one primary room. So they've got a lot of audiovisuals. So they're going to be helping us out with recording some of the...

24:56
some of the presentations, but we're not going to be able to get all 36 presentations recorded. We just don't have the bandwidth to do that. So our plan is after the event is over to make these presentations available, obviously we've got to sit down and do the non-fund accounting portion of that to see if we cover our costs, can we pay our bills type of thing, and whether that allows us to do...

25:21
you know, a small pay to play to access some of these things, or, you know, it's a free resource at that point. We're just going to have to play it by ear and see. But we definitely don't want to stifle the opportunity for people to get this information. That's the key is to encourage people to do this. But obviously, we got to make sure we're covering the nut of expenses there because if we go in the hole, then it makes it tougher next year to do it again. So yeah, we think we'll have some resources available afterwards for sure. Okay, cool.

25:50
So we have like five more minutes to go here. And I guess I would love to hear your opinion about the whole shift to homesteading stuff during and after COVID. Because a lot of people in that first year with the COVID pandemic had time to sit back and go, okay, what are we doing with our lives? And what do we actually want to be doing with our lives? And a lot of people shifted to this homesteading thing.

26:18
What, what do you think of that? Cause I think it's great, except that I also think that a lot of people got in over their heads. So what's your take on it? Wow. Um, I, I could spend an hour talking about this and I know we won't, but, um, yeah, definitely some personal experiences in this. So, so yeah, so COVID happens. We all freak out. We all get locked down. All the things that go along with it. It gets, you know, deeply politicized. I mean, just, just everything you can imagine, but we all got that little taste.

26:47
of just what it may be like if our everyday lives get drastically changed for whatever reason it is, whether it's a global catastrophe or a virus. So we got that taste. And like you said, that got a lot of us thinking, okay, we got to snap out of this dream world that we're in, or we got to at least take the blinders off and be able to see 360 around us. So.

27:13
What's interesting is, is I saw that firsthand here in West Virginia, because people started reaching out to me that, you know, as you're sitting around in lockdown and quarantine, you're, you're obviously skinning the internet, you're on YouTube, so I, a lot of people found me at that point where I'm talking about rural land and how to acquire it and all of that. So I started getting a lot of inquiries. Hey, how do I find land? Like you're giving in these examples, you know, like your own personal example, where we got a hundred acres for $250 an acre.

27:43
24 years ago, is that still possible? And so we started having these conversations and it's just over and over again, it was, if I've learned anything through COVID is that I do not want to be in an urban setting. I do not want to be reliant on trucks or other businesses providing me food more than a day or two in advance type of thing. And so there's definitely a pro to that. I say, you know,

28:11
good for these people to recognize that and to realize that, yeah, you can't always depend on other entities, other people, other organizations or our government to take care of us. We have to assume more responsibility for our own livelihood and our own existence. So that was a pro. The con, as you mentioned, is some people are like, okay, I'm going to dive into this head first. And I won't get into the details, but I could tell you of a couple that did that very thing.

28:40
They purchased 111 acres, very rural, more, I mean, makes my place look downtown, but very rural here in West Virginia. And they asked me to do some consulting with them and help before they moved. But they moved in the grand scheme of things, but because of just not being prepared, they spent the first winter in a makeshift cabin they put together that had no insulation and it was not good.

29:07
It was not a good situation and that's kind of an extreme example, but I think a lot of people that pulled the trigger on buying land, that land may be still setting fallow. Some of it's not. Some people have moved on and started working it. Or if some people went out and bought a piece of equipment or maybe it was a food dehydrator, it's like, well, I'm at least going to be able to try to put some food up or a pressure canner. All that stuff's good. But I think some people...

29:34
Got in over their heads or they got it and realized, well, this is harder than it looks. Or they got into it and say, well, I'm, you know, things are going back to normal. So I'm going to, I'm going to be comfortable with putting my blinders back on. Another con that we've seen is that rural property prices have just skyrocketed. And I did an example of this on my YouTube channel where pre COVID it was, you could still find acreage here in West Virginia below a thousand an acre. And that was, you know, that was 2019. I did a video on that, I believe.

30:03
And now, we're doing everything we can to try to find people land that's 3,000, 4,000 an acre. So we're definitely riding this bubble right now when it comes to rural, raw land. I think it'll settle down again, but I don't know that it'll ever get back to where it was pre-COVID. So that's kind of the drag is if people didn't get a chance to move on land before the bubble hit, then they're going to be spending more money to try to pursue those dreams if they're trying to acquire land.

30:32
Yes. And that's why we bought 3.1 acres in 2020 before everything went crazy because we were like, we were like, if we're ever going to do it, we need to do it now. And we're so thankful that we did. So I was just curious because I've talked to many, many, many people in the last year for this podcast. And it seems like everyone had a COVID baby. And I don't mean a human baby. I mean an idea or a project or something. And

31:01
COVID was terrible, and I've said this a lot, it was a terrible thing. But if you didn't lose someone you loved, if you didn't get long COVID yourself, you had time to reevaluate and think about what you wanted to do. And if you were lucky enough to move forward on what you wanted to do, you did. So again, COVID sucked, but some great things came out of it. And we're not done with it yet. There's still, COVID is gonna be a thing forever. Now just like the regular flu. But-

31:30
the insanity of that first year and a half is maybe settled down some. Yeah. So, yeah. And it's, and it's not going to be a rarity. I mean, a global pandemic of a virus. Yeah. Hopefully that doesn't happen every summer type of thing. And like you said, we're going to be dealing with the COVID virus. It's getting watered down. Um, but there's always going to be something. And just this, um, couple of weekends ago, I was trying to fly back from Canada and the CrowdStrike thing happened. And.

32:00
And while that wasn't anything close to what COVID was like, it still just, it reminded me again, cause I was stuck in Charlotte international airport and I saw people start to break down. It's like, okay, we, society is just, it's just balanced so fragilely on the edge of a knife right now that if anything upsets that, whether it's access to food or access to travel or access to just even creature comforts, people are going to start to freak out.

32:30
And what can we do? I don't necessarily think the big prep when it comes to homesteading that we got to prep for an apocalyptic type thing as much as it is, we need to just be ready for a four week to four month lull in resources. So it could just be that things get paralyzed before they can get reset. And if it's one of those things, are you going to be a victim in that situation? Or if my faith tells me that...

32:54
I don't want to be a victim. I actually want to be a resource for others. I want to be able to help others. So if I've got plenty, because I've been the, you know, I've been the aunt instead of the grasshopper per se, then I can reach out to my neighbor in a time of need to say, hey, it's really rough right now. Things are going on. We have some resources for you. We've got some food or we've got some other things. That's what I feel challenged to do. And that's what I like to see.

33:19
to see others people just embrace. It's like, what can I do to not only take care of myself, but take care of others should we see a lull in these resources that we're so used to? Yes, and the thing that I hang on to is that worry is just borrowing tomorrow's troubles. So don't worry, just be proactive and take care of yourself and try to help people around you and then you're too busy to worry. Right, very good, yes. So, all right, Troy.

33:44
I really enjoyed talking with you and I'm so excited for your conference. I kind of wish I was 20 years younger and a lot richer so I could go. Well, I'm sure there'll be a home setting conference in your neck of the woods. They're popping up like mushrooms after a spring rain, which I think is just fantastic. I love, love to see people get more and more involved in it and to see, to see big business corporations, all that stuff, even wake up and see that, Hey, you know, there's

34:11
let's support this stuff, let's get behind it, let's do what we can to fund some of these things because it is a growing area and they want to cater to their audience, but it's good to be able to have that back and forth where we can see more organizations do these type of things and be able to cover the cost of them because it is expensive to do and it's nice to see companies partner with these type of events. It really is. I'm really glad that you have the opportunity to do it.

34:41
Again, don't leave me when I stop recording because I need to file upload. Thank you so much for your time today, Troy. I appreciate it. Wonderful. Appreciate it, Mary. Thanks for your time.