The Heartland Self Reliance Conference

Today I'm talking with Jeff at The Heartland Self Reliance Conference. You can also follow on Facebook.

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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 Jeff at the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference. Good morning, Jeff. How are you? Good morning, Mary. I'm well. How are you? I'm great. So I don't know a whole lot about you or what you guys do, so tell me about yourself and the conference.

00:30
I sure will. Well, that's, uh, I'm, I'm known to many out there as the everyday prepper I got originally got started in the preparedness side of things. Uh, but always been into gardening and probably the last 12 years or so, my wife and I have been working towards being more self-sufficient and, uh, we just moved to a new place last year. Gives us some new opportunities. So we're, we're working to get everything going there. And, uh, it's, you know, one of my big things is.

00:59
coming from both sides, homesteading and preparedness, I really realized how the two really need to come together in a lot of ways and both sides need to learn from each other. Yes, absolutely. And the great thing about homesteading is it doesn't have to be a huge property. It can just be a quarter of an acre or a 10th of an acre. You can still.

01:24
grow things, you can still cook from scratch, you can still learn how to take care of yourself. Yeah, and you know, we had, I was just talking to a potential vendor for the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference, and they have a business in urban Cleveland, Ohio, and she was telling me about how many of their customers are.

01:48
actually, you know, in an urban area and they're growing whether it's on their balcony or on a rooftop or wherever they find space there Grown their own food and they they're developing an interest in homesteading Yes, because it's a lifestyle. It's not it's not defined by space or Ownership of lots of room and I love that because we did the same thing back when we lived in town so that's part of

02:14
The reason I started the podcast is because I wanted people to realize and maybe learn that they can grow some of their own stuff and they can make things in their apartment if they want to. My daughter, the apartment she lived in for several years while she was in college, she was able to have, I got her some planters that would fit over the railing on her balcony and she had some...

02:43
peppers, some tomatoes, some other things going there. And I got her a hanging herb basket arrangement that you could put about, if I remember right, about eight different plants in there. And she had that hanging on the side of the railing. And then she had, I think, one or two pots with tomatoes in them. So, you know, there's lots you can do and you're really only limited by your imagination. Mm-hmm, yeah. And...

03:09
Honestly with YouTube and Facebook and all the things on the internet you can learn how to grow anything or how to do anything I am so Happy that I live in this particular time. Oh Yeah, and there's you know, there's the internet really gives us the opportunity to really expand expand our knowledge and the ideas that are out there because that's

03:37
You know, 40 years ago, if somebody told me one day I would be raising hydroponic tomatoes, I would have told them they were crazy or growing hydroponic tomatoes. But that's, we did that a few years ago, just more or less as an experiment. We got everything we needed and we tried it. We haven't done any here at this house yet, but I imagine at some point in the future we'll be doing it again. Yeah.

04:01
I don't know how that works. Could you give me the short version of how hydroponics works? Because we've never done it. Yeah, sure. And you're just putting a combination of things. If I remember correctly, there's some salt and some other stuff that you make a mixture that you put in there with water by nutrients. And basically, we would get a five-gallon bucket.

04:30
and you can go online and you can find these covers. They're like a lid, will fit right over the bucket, but the center of them drops down and has sort of a mesh cup in there. And that's you put the plant in there, use some hydroponic medium. The stuff we were looking to look sort of like using looks sort of like lava rock that you would put down in there and actually plant the plant in there.

04:57
And you just had to make sure that the liquid stayed up where the roots of the plant could get to it. And really you could do anything and it was amazing. You would pull that lid off and look and the mass of roots that had grown down into that bucket, into the liquid was just amazing. Huh, okay. Well,

05:17
It's something to think about for us here. I don't know that we're going to take on any more projects this summer because Oh, come on. You always got to have more projects. Uh, yeah, no, my husband is actually at physical therapy right now because he has a herniated disc. So, so I think that maybe the gardening that we're doing is probably the gardening we're going to be doing this year. That's probably it for now. That may be wise. Mm hmm. So, so tell me your definition of self-reliance.

05:47
My definition of self-reliance is basically, you know, nobody's going to be a hundred percent self-reliant because, you know, basically you're always going to need something. It'd be very hard to be totally self-reliant. But what I'm looking at is just having the ability to get along without having to run to the store every week or some people run there every day and trying to make sure that we are prepared in a way that if...

06:16
if society would shut down for a while, that we're still gonna be able to survive. We're gonna have all the essentials we need. You know, we're obviously not gonna have everything we'd like to have, but if you give it some forethought and you plan ahead, you can easily adjust so you'll know what you can live without. You'll know what's essential that you better stock up on. And I think being able to live a self-reliant lifestyle,

06:46
run into an emergency or we have problems with supply chain or anything else, I think that's the way to go. I think everybody should try to obtain that. Okay. So that's how my husband and I have been living basically since we got together. We always kind of plan for a two-week.

07:08
stint of not being able to get out because we live in Minnesota and it snows and there have been times where we have not been able to get out of our driveway for three days. So, we tend to shop for two weeks at a time, sometimes three. We're lucky enough to have some storage space so we can buy a head on bulk items. But also on the self-reliance part, for me as a woman,

07:37
My self-reliant stuff is that I know how to start a campfire. I don't need my husband or my son to do it. I have fired a.22 rifle twice. I'm not really a gun girl. I don't love it and there's many reasons why, but I can do it and I'm a pretty good shot. Knowing that it's really good to have extra blankets and extra clothes for if the power goes out and it's minus 20 outside.

08:05
You know, those kind of things that aren't necessarily food based, but more, more warmth and heat if we need it kind of stuff. So I think that for us here, self-reliance is about going back to the basics. And if you don't have gas to your stove or electricity to your stove, you can go outside and start a campfire and cook over an open flame. And there is some skill to that.

08:33
The first time I did it, I burned the stuff I was trying to cook.

08:40
So at the conference, do you guys talk about that kind of stuff too? Yeah. And that's, we're also going to have a, I wanted to have a life skills line of classes there because as I go around and talk to people and meet with different groups and do some training, it's, it's just become an obvious that, you know, society has changed, has changed from, from when I was a kid, because, you know, we had shop class and a home mat.

09:08
And people learned a lot of the basics there if they weren't picking them up at home from mom or grandma or dad, grandpa. But a lot of that's gone away. We have people today that can't necessarily read a tape measure. They may not know how to use some of the basic tools. They may not know how to start a fire, sharpen a knife, sharpen an axe. We're also going to have one of my friends who's a member of

09:33
Team Rubicon, he's a sawyer for them. They respond to emergencies. He's going to do a, a class on chainsaw maintenance with a little safety thrown in as well as some app sharpening there. You know, there's just so many basics that, that people don't really know that would benefit them. Figured let's, let's put them in the, to short classes that'll sort of fit in between the other classes and give people the opportunity to pick up on some of that stuff. Yeah.

10:02
that's really important. When we moved here for, well, almost four years ago, I keep saying this, almost four years ago, it will eventually be four years, I promise people. My husband hadn't really used a chainsaw at all and we have a wood burning boiler that heats our house. And so he got ready to go out to use the chainsaw on the big logs we had delivered.

10:31
And I said, what do you know about doing this? And he said, I pulled the cord and I saw the wood and I said, let's back up a minute, please. Because my dad used to do this all the time. I used to help him with the wood. I used to watch what he did. I don't use chainsaws. I don't like them. I'm afraid of them. I don't wanna do it. And if I had to, I would, but I don't want to. So I was like, here's the deal. Number one, you need to be really careful

11:01
because you're gonna get hurt if you don't know what you're doing. Number two, there are safeguards on chainsaws, but that doesn't mean you're safe. Number three, when you kick the wood out of the way, make sure it's not right behind your feet, because if you step back, you're gonna fall with a chainsaw in your hands, things like that. And he didn't know any of this stuff. And I was losing my mind. I was like, okay, I was already nervous enough, but now that I know what you don't know, now I'm really afraid for you.

11:31
So a chainsaw skills class sounds amazing. The other thing I was gonna say is the other part of self-reliance that I learned a long time ago is being able to recognize edible plants if you're out in your yard or in your tree line or hiking in the woods. Because if you can't get to a store or the stores are not open because the computers went down and the world has gone nuts.

11:58
Knowing what you can eat out of your yard or your treeline or within, I don't know, five miles of your house is really important. Do you guys do anything like that? Well, we're hoping to. That's, I need to go and look at the venue there to see what's going to be available in the area. Um, we know some folks who do do classes like that. And my wife has been through a lot of them and, you know, it's really, really difficult. And the best way is to have somebody actually take you out and show you, because it's really difficult.

12:27
to look online or look at a book and then go out and find a plant and be 100% sure that you identified it correctly. But you're right, there are so many things out there. If you would see our garden, we have things that volunteered there when they started growing in the spring that I'm not allowed to till down because they're beneficial. We have some lambs quarter and some other things in there.

12:55
Basically, you know, I spent my whole life whenever I'd see them, I considered them weeds and would go into the destroy mode. But now we're actually using them as part of our diet. Yeah, it's amazing. We had this weed growing in our garden at the old house and it looked like a succulent plant. A succulent is a plant that absorbs water and hangs onto water so the leaves look fat and turned out to be purslane.

13:24
Perslane is amazing. I've talked about this a couple of times already, but it has more nutritional value than spinach. Yeah, and So we tried it we liked it and when it grows in the garden here We don't take it out because it's actually good for you we have a feet trough that we've done experiments on growing several different things in and This year my wife planted cucumbers in it

13:50
and some purse lanes start going in it. So now we have cucumbers with purse lane growing all in between them and under the vines. And it's really amazing because you know, you get the two beneficial plants that are coexisting and thriving. So, you know, people gotta learn what that stuff is and learn how to benefit from it. Yes, yes they do. And hopefully your conference will help with that.

14:20
It must be really, I don't want to say difficult, because difficult is probably the wrong word. It must be a lot to set up this kind of conference because there are so many things that you could have a class on. So what are the classes that you have planned already? Well, we're gonna have, Sean and Beth Doherty are gonna do some classes for us. Their son, Luke, is gonna do a pork processing demonstration for us.

14:49
And then I've got William Bond, the permaculture consultant is going to be there. They haven't quite nailed down which classes he was going to do. But you know, I sat through one of his soil classes back in March and incredible, incredible gentleman and he's got some really great knowledge. And people, it's one thing that people just really don't understand, you know, the ins and outs of soil.

15:18
that's going to be very important. On the preparedness side, there's so many things to go into there, but I want to focus on things that are going to help move towards self-reliance. Things are going to be beneficial for folks. I'm hoping to get a couple of classes in there. Something hit me here about a month ago, and I'm working on finding somebody to teach it, but when I was a kid,

15:49
Now people wouldn't even know how to hold a slingshot. And a slingshot is a great thing to have on hand. You could go out and get food with it. You could actually defend yourself with it if you needed to. But people, that's just something that has sort of slipped through the cracks. I'm also hoping I've got a bow maker. Again, I'm really hoping I can get him there. But we're sort of up against the archery competition time there. So we'll have to see if he has an opening.

16:19
but I've seen him do an incredible class for the kids on archery. And, uh, you know, so in between homesteading and preparedness, I'm just going to try to find things that are going to cover all bases, especially with the homesteading. We want to have some classes that are going to be interesting to people who have been in into it for a while. Then I also want to have classes for folks in urban and rural areas to kind of help them along and point out some of the things they could be doing in there.

16:48
their own conditions there. Fantastic. I actually worry a lot about the people who live in the cities when I think about all this stuff going on in the world. Because my husband and my sons and I used to have long what if discussions when they were younger because they were interested in this stuff. And the big what if that always came up in those discussions is what if we lived in an apartment in the middle of Manhattan?

17:19
And everything went crazy. How would we survive? And my husband and I were like, well, we're still young enough that we would be taking you guys with backpacks and we would be hiking our way out of the city and praying that we actually got out of the city. Because the city is not the place to be in that situation. And so the boys were boys, obviously boys are boys, and they think about shooting things and beating things up. And...

17:49
looting stores to get food and that kind of stuff and of course video games play into that too and They were like we would be fine We know what we're doing and I said I don't think you actually do I don't think you understand that humans are the most unpredictable creatures when panic is is Flowing and you might think you know what that group of people over there are gonna do, but you don't actually know and

18:16
They thought they had it knocked and then COVID happened. And my kids were pretty much grown at that point, four years ago. And my youngest was still here. He is still here. He's 22 now. And he was very concerned about the fact that stores were closing and that people had to wear masks and had to make sure they used hand sanitizer and wash their hands and had to do all these things.

18:46
And I said, darlin', this is your first apocalypse. And he said, this is an apocalypse. Apocalypse is loud. And I said, no. I said, this is a form of an apocalypse. It is something that hasn't happened before and it is impacting the entire world. That's an apocalypse. And he said, huh. I said, yeah, this is probably the quietest apocalypse you will ever encounter. And it really made him.

19:12
stop and think about all his preconceived notions about what he would do if something happened that was out of the ordinary in a big way. And there were many discussions had during that time frame too.

19:28
So, yeah, it's a thing. So, with the conference, tell me when it's scheduled for.

19:37
It is scheduled for May 2nd through the 4th, 2025. It's gonna be at the Harvest Ridge Event Center in Millersburg, Ohio. It's right in the heart of Amish country in Ohio. And Millersburg and the Holmes County area are just such fantastic areas. I mean, this location, you would wanna go there even if there was no conference. There's so many things to see and do there. It's just incredible, great people all around.

20:06
People that follow the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference on Facebook are gonna see me doing some reels. As we get closer to the ticket sales in the first October into the conference, I'll be doing more conference-related things. But over the summer here, I wanna visit some of the establishments in the area, some of the restaurants, some of the other businesses that might support people that are going to the conference.

20:35
And I have, I have sworn to the people who are coming to the conference that I will go out there and vet these locations who have pie or ice cream. Okay. I want to make sure I take care of that. I don't want to let anything slip through the cracks. People got to know where the ice cream and the pies are. What about cookies? Oh yeah, them too. You know, no, no good cookie gets left behind. So.

21:03
Yeah, I want to hit all of them because some of them just have some fantastic stuff there and I want people to know about it so they can take advantage of it when they're there. The best part of road trips is finding the unknown mom and pop places that do it absolutely right. And just down the road from the conference, there's a place called Mama's Diner. They're doing some remodeling there right now. Great food.

21:30
There are so many little places like that throughout the area. I'm going to highlight all of them so people don't have to go out and look for them on their own when they get there. They're going to have a list and they can get their targets set up in advance. So basically they come for the yummies but they stay for the information. Yeah. Boy, you're smart. A hungry person might not learn real well so I think they ought to be happy and get in there and enjoy.

22:00
Well, yes, because why would you want to miss an opportunity like that? No, I get it. It's a really good idea and it's fun. Yeah, and that's, you know, I want the I want people to be aware of what's out there in the community. I also want to get the community engaged so they know that people will be coming to the conference and they'll be ready to welcome them. So can people buy tickets now or do you have a start date for when they can get tickets? No, ticket sales will begin the first of October.

22:30
And we're going to be doing ticketing a little bit different. A lot of events will start ticketing at a certain time and they'll offer, you know, some early bird sales and everything. What we're going to do is starting October 1st, we're going to be on level one of early ticket sales and we're going to offer a designated number of heavily discounted tickets for level one. And

22:56
everybody who gets one of those tickets is also going to be placed into a drawing. And if you get in level one, you're going to be in the drawings for all five levels. Those who buy soon are going to get the heaviest discount and they're going to be in five levels worth of drawings. Awesome! That's great. I'm guessing you're trying to do this so you get the buzz going about the conference.

23:23
but also because some people who are into homesteading and self-reliance and stuff, don't necessarily have a lot of money to spend on a trip like this. That is true. And, you know, and having the opportunity to start that far out and have people work towards it and get some good deals, I think is a good thing. And, you know, from my perspective, I'm renting what is basically a county fairground that's used for an event center.

23:53
And I have to, I've made a down payment on that, and I have got to pay the bill six months before the conference. So it's not like I can wait for people to come in the gate. Yeah. I need to get some cash up front there so I can pay for the whole place and make sure this happens. Yeah, and on that note, that's a lot of responsibility and a lot of taking on an unknown. So.

24:22
So why, how did you get into this in the first place? Well, I've had had friends in the prepping world asking me for several years, you know, if I was ever going to do a conference up this way, because the majority there's there's a preparedness and homesteading conference festival down in southern Ohio. Just change your name. Heritage skills are down in Vinton County. And then we also have the Food Independent Summit that's also in in the same area as our conference.

24:51
But getting both preparedness and homesteading up in the area that we're in, people have been asking me, and I think a lot of the folks I know down south just want to come up to see Amish country too. The one thing that always bothered me was the venue, finding the perfect venue. My wife and I were at the Kentucky Sustainability.

25:18
festival they have down in Bowling Green, Kentucky. We were down there last October. I woke up two o'clock in the morning and said, the Harvest Ridge Event Center in Millersburg is the perfect spot. And we got with the folks there and they said they had never heard of what we're doing, but they were more than happy to help us. And then things have just worked out. We've come into, run into so many roadblocks where you think, okay, this is the end of the show right here, we can't go beyond. And then we pray about it a little bit. Next thing you know.

25:47
things are worked out and we're back on track. So at this point where we're committed, there's, I don't believe there's anything to stop us now. So we're just gonna push ahead and get it done. Awesome. I always get a little bit twitchy about the term prepper because people have this perception that preppers are not exactly sane people. Yeah.

26:15
When I come across people who go, oh, preppers, they're crazy. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Preppers are people who prepare for things that are unseen coming down the road toward them. Yes, there are some people who take it to the extreme, but there are people like my husband and I who know that you can get stuck in your house for three days because you can't get out of your driveway because it snowed for two days before that.

26:45
and you're in blizzard conditions and you can't get out to clean out the driveway, let alone drive. So we consider ourselves preppers, but we consider ourselves preparers for things that might happen. And it makes me slightly angry when people are like, Oh, preppers are crazy people. They, they're hoarders and then, and then, and then, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not everyone is the same.

27:15
When I saw that you were the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference, I was like, okay, is this going to be somebody like us who's reasonable in understanding that preparation is key? Or is this going to be someone who is a hoarder and, you know, at the extreme end of prepping? And I'm really glad to know that you're not at the extreme end of prepping because that would have been a totally different conversation today. Well, yeah. And really, it's...

27:42
I get what you mean by extreme, but really, you know, whatever level of preparedness somebody wants to get into is really, really their concern. What's really irritated me over the years is negative connotation, the media, and some of our government officials have put on prepping. And they've, some of them have done the same thing with homesteading as well. And that's why I throw preparedness in there instead of prepping.

28:10
I kind of want to disarm them on being able to use the word term prepping. And I'm hoping that I was afraid prepping would turn some people off. And I just wanted to come in and get a full understanding, you know, prepping homesteading is all about taking care of yourself. And I think that's a wonderful thing. I wish everybody was equipped with the knowledge and all the supplies they needed to be.

28:39
be able to take care of themselves. But the fact of the matter is, a lot of people need help with that, and that's what we wanna do with the conference. Yes, and I wanted to make the distinction because it really does bother me when people just assume that they understand the term you're using, and they may not understand the term you're using because words mean different things to different people. And I am a big...

29:06
Word girl, I love words, I love reading, I love learning by reading. And so when it's a distinction between crazy prepper and reasonable person who is prepared for something coming down the road, I want to make that distinction. Oh yeah. And I always get a kick out of people that, you know, kind of look at you and say the word prepper with a little bit of a sneer or smirk.

29:34
And I just sit back and say, okay, you won't see me at Walmart when a snowstorm's coming in. No, because you won't need to be at Walmart because you already have a plan. We can just sit at home and enjoy life. Mm hmm. Exactly. My parents called me, I don't remember, a couple of winters ago to make sure that we were OK, because they knew we were having terrible weather. And they're in Maine and I'm in Minnesota. And I answered the phone and my dad was like, how you doing?

30:04
And I said, we're doing fine. Generator kicked in when the power went out. Wood burning for, ah, can't talk. Wood burning boiler is doing its job and heating the house and we're having a really good dinner tonight because everything's still working. And he said, that's my girl. You made your heart happy. Oh yeah. And they have the same, almost the same setup that we do. So when things hit the fan.

30:34
There, I usually am pretty sure that my parents with their lovely fortress of a home are safe and they're almost 78 and 81 on the 23rd and 30th of this month. And I used to worry about them. I don't worry about them. They got it knocked, they're set. So there is some real security in being self-reliant and being prepared.

31:03
And I love that you're doing conference about this because people do need to know how to take care of themselves. Well, thank you. And that's what it's all about, helping people, helping get the word out, helping getting people educated on the things that they need to move them towards a self-reliant lifestyle. And that's, you know, we're at the stage now, we're trying to get the word out, so we appreciate anybody who can spread the word.

31:32
If you're on Facebook, get on there and like and follow the Heartland Self-Reliance Conference page. And we're going to be blasting social media trying to get the word out and doing a number of other things we haven't seen other conferences do. But we're going to try to get the word out to as many people as we can. We appreciate anybody can help us do that. How many people do you have room for for this conference?

32:00
Well, you know, that's right now with what everything that we have arranged the facilities we have arranged to get there, we could probably easily do upwards of a thousand. But if we use the entire fairgrounds, we can probably get upwards of three thousand in there. Okay.

32:19
And then those people will go out in the world after they attend the conference and share what they learned and other people will learn from them. So it's a really nice spider web of information going out after the conference. Definitely, and you know that's when you look at the math on that. If you just have every person attends goes out and spreads it to two people and they spread it to two people, you're really getting the word out there. Yep, and that's what we need to do.

32:49
the hub of it to start spreading that out? Well, it's been a lot of fun so far. I'm meeting some really great people. A lot of the great people are right up there in the Millersburg, Ohio area, including the staff at the Harvest Ridge Event Center. And you know, I can't say enough about the event center because it is easily the nicest facility we have ever seen for any event like this. Fun and great.

33:16
All right, Jeff, I try to keep these to half an hour and we're at that point. So thank you for talking with me today. I really appreciate it. Oh, thank you, Mary. Thanks for having me on here and let me talk about something I love. Oh, that's why I do this because I love talking to you guys and you tell me stuff you love and it all works out great. Good deal. All right, have a great day. Thanks, Mary. Bye.