The Homemade Homestead

Today I'm talking with Crystal at The Homemade Homestead.

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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 Crystal at the Homemade Homestead, which I love the name. Go ahead, Crystal. Crystal, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm good. Tell me about yourself and what you do.

00:24
Well, my name is Crystal. I'm married to my husband, Robert, for 24 years, and we have four kids, ages three to 21. We had a little age gap in between number one and two, three, and four. And so we decided that we wanted to do some homesteading. It started many, many years ago when we lived in Georgia, and then we moved to Alabama.

00:51
and decided to purchase a poultry farm, a commercial poultry farm. And if you know anything about commercial poultry, you cannot have backyard chickens if you do commercial poultry. So we ended up selling the poultry farm and buying some land and decided that we really, our dream was just a homestead. Well, more so my dream. My husband was kind of along for the ride, but he gets more and more interested as we go.

01:20
So the Homemade Homestead was just a way for me to kind of talk about some of our beginner homesteading. I kind of consider myself a beginner at this point because all the things that we did in the past, I've kind of either forgotten or, you know, things have changed. I had to remind myself of things with with all the stuff I've got going on. But the Homemade Homestead was a way for me to document some of our beginning.

01:50
things with homesteading. We're a pretty private family, so we don't allow our children, we don't allow their faces on any kind of social media. So that presents a challenge for me when I want to document things because my kids are always around. So, but that was also a way for me to document my soap making and tallow. I started making homemade tallow balm for my face and homemade soap.

02:18
And once I started making it, it was so exciting to me just to be able to make something from scratch that I created that was natural and non-toxic. And then I started selling it. And now I'm just obsessed with all things natural and making whatever I can. Awesome. And I'm going to tell you a secret. I think that everybody is a beginner homesteader, even if they've been doing it for 20 years, because there's always something new.

02:47
Oh, yes, absolutely. It's a little scary, you know, when you, especially me, I love to research things and I get on there and I start researching stuff and it becomes a little overwhelming. And then you kind of get paralyzed because you're afraid to start. So I have to kind of withdraw myself from doing too much research and just get in there and do it. Yeah. We had a thing happen here last week. We had black ants.

03:16
flying ants coming in our window frame into the house. And we haven't had this happen in almost four years we've been here. And I was like, there's gotta be a home remedy to make these guys not come in. So I went to Google, as everyone does, and it said they really don't like lavender, they don't like peppermint, and they really don't like vinegar. And I had lavender essential oil and I had peppermint oil.

03:44
but I already had vinegar in a spray bottle. So I sprayed the window frame and within 24 hours, no more ants. And I was like, hey, it worked. And that's a homesteading hack, you know? Absolutely. There's so many natural, easy ways, even for somebody, I think, that lives on small acreage or apartments or anything small. There's so many different ways you can get into it that are fun and don't require a lot.

04:13
Absolutely. You are absolutely right. We did it out of necessity because we were raising four kids on one income and it's more time but less money if you make things yourself typically. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I know with a lot of the things that I make are out of necessity for our health. We each have our own set of health challenges.

04:42
I've got really bad migraines. My husband, after we had our poultry farm, he was in there in those houses for hours a day, breathing in just really nasty, dirty air, and he didn't wear a mask. And then after COVID, we had COVID three different times. And I think it might've damaged his lungs a little bit, along with all of the poultry house, just the in and out.

05:08
daily breathing that stuff in and he suddenly developed adult asthma, which was a huge hindrance to my homesteading goals because I need him to build things. I make things, but he builds things. It got to a point for a while where he couldn't even walk to the mailbox because he could not breathe. He felt like he was suffocating. He would start coughing so bad that he was gagging.

05:37
Just making natural things is a huge part, I feel like, of trying to regain our health. And I want my kids to have a better life than I did. I want them to have good health. And I feel like that starts with me as the homemaker. I kind of guide the temperature of our home. So it's exciting to me. Yes. And I will share a story about

06:07
not being able to breathe. When my kids were young, they would get a head cold and they get all stuffy, you know. And there's a thing on the market that is Vicks Vaporub. And I'd been brought up with that and I don't love how it smells and it's really sharp. And so I was like, hmm, I wonder if there's a way to make something like it that isn't something I buy. And so what I did is I got eucalyptus essential oil and

06:35
Rosemary essential oil and something else. I can't remember what now. Maybe lemon. And I mixed the coconut oil and the oils together because coconut oil is typically hard at room temperature. And so I tried that on the kids and they were much more receptive to having that under their nose and on their chest because of the lemon scent.

06:59
because it masked some of the sting smell from the eucalyptus and the rosemary. So same result, but different ingredients. And I don't know what they put in Vic's vapor rub besides the acid ingredients. So I was very impressed with myself that the kids were like, that smells really good. Can I put it on again? Hey, that actually gives me an idea. Because the

07:27
The bombs that I make for my face and our soap, I make out of tallow. And it was kind of an accidental thing, I guess. I was at our butcher one day. I tried to get our meat from a local butcher. I'm a big proponent of shopping local and supporting local businesses. And so I had started buying all of our meat from a local butcher and he had beef fat. And I had read about making tallow.

07:57
and making it for your face and all the benefits of it, cooking with it and so forth. So I bought a bunch of it from him and that's when I started making the tallow and I render it down myself. It's a long, painful process when you're making it for face cream because you don't want to smell like a cow. So I have to do a lot of purification on it to make it smell where I would be comfortable using it.

08:26
wondering and trying to research different things that I can make with tallow. And I never thought about doing like a Vicks Vaporub. So like you use coconut oil, I wonder if I could use tallow because it's also hard at room temperature. I think you can. Yeah, that would be a great idea, especially with winter coming. And you know, for my husband, he he can be a little stubborn when it comes to

08:53
my natural remedies. He'll do it, but he's not exactly pleased about it. So he will try it though. So now I've got an idea. I'm going to make some. All right. I helped somebody today. Yay. Yeah. And the other thing is I was going to say if anybody's going to try using essential oils, the important thing to remember is that they need to be in a carrier oil if you're going to put it on your skin. Yes, absolutely. Because some

09:22
some of the essential oils will actually sting or burn your skin and it hurts. So don't do that, do not use it. Great. Yeah, yeah, we, I've been using essential oils for probably maybe six or seven years. I didn't really know anything about it until we moved up here and I started meeting all of these friends that were into the same things that I was, it's kind of funny.

09:50
when you find a person that is into one thing, they typically are into other things that you are interested in. So I kind of find that the people that I meet that homeschool because we homeschool are also interested in homesteading and they're also interested in natural health. And it just typically works out that way. So once I started getting into the homeschooling, I met all these friends that were into essential oils.

10:17
natural remedies and things like that, and I started getting interested in it as well. It's very fascinating. You found your tribe. Well, I did. I'm not much of a people person, so I have to kind of make myself go out and be around people, but I do find that when I do it, I enjoy it, and I can glean information from individuals that means more than if I'm just Googling it at home.

10:47
Yeah, and I am not a people person either. I always say that I don't like people, but I love persons. And when I do actually spend time with my people, I do enjoy it, but it's exhausting and I don't do it often. And it's really sad because this podcast has made it possible for me to talk to so many people who I consider to be my people.

11:15
I will never meet you guys. I don't travel. I don't want to. I have no interest in traveling. I like where I live. But I feel like I make a new friend every time I talk to somebody for the podcast because you guys are into what I'm into. Yes. Or I learn something new from you, which makes me so happy every time. Yeah. I'm the same way. My husband tries to, especially for our boys, you know, our children, they need friends and they need...

11:43
They need more interaction than I do. So, you know, I kind of do it for them, but me, I would be perfectly content to text or speak audibly to a person and exchange tips and learn things about them, but I don't necessarily have to be sitting in front of you. I'm kind of, I'm introverted in that way. So homesteading seems to work out well for me because, you know, I love to be home and we have a lot of plans for our property.

12:12
um... things that i've wanted to do but i didn't feel that they were possible uh... and i don't know if you've ever listened to the holler homestead uh... or watch their youtube videos they uh... they have some property over in north carolina and they do a bunch of videos on how they homestead and one of the things that they had they had a lot of woods and uh...

12:38
I've always wanted pigs, but our prop, we've got 44 acres, but it's probably 80% wooded. And they would use their pigs to clear their land. And so once I started watching their videos and I saw how they were able to homestead on land that was very similar to ours, it just, it kind of opened up a lot of possibilities for me and it was very exciting. So.

13:05
I've been slowly trying to convince my husband for us to get some pigs and a dairy cow. So I need prayer. Okay. Everybody pray for Chris. She gets pigs and a cow, a dairy cow. Yeah, it's funny how you can make your land work with you, but you have to work with it too. Oh yeah. And when we looked for our 3.1 acre place that we live at now.

13:34
My husband said, we need to find a place that has a place for a garden. And I said, yeah, that's, that's great. But you know, we can always make a place for a garden. Yeah. He said, honey, he said, I don't want to have to take down trees and, and clear the land to make a garden the first year. He said, I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for this. And I was like, okay. And so when our wonderful realtor friend found us this place and we came to see it for the first time.

14:04
there was an open fieldish kind of thing to the left of the driveway. And my husband looked over at it and went, that's where my garden's going. And I said, you've got your wish, you're set. And he did get his wish the last three years, not this year, but the last three years, that garden has produced food for us, for us to preserve, for us to donate to the food shelf, for us to sell at the farmer's market, for us to sell at the farm stand on the property.

14:33
This year, not so much. We've had a ton of rain and the garden is like three weeks behind. Oh, so you're the opposite of us. We've had hardly no rain and our garden is, it's pitiful. It's not even a garden anymore. Yep. We've been, we've been doing, we're not really God people, but we've been doing a little asking Mother Nature to smarten up and maybe provide some good weather.

14:59
for us so we can have some zucchinis and tomatoes and cucumbers this year. I ate my first cucumber the other day. So we had one. That's exciting. It was better than none. Yes. And it was delicious. And I tried to share it with the husband, but he was like, Nope, that one's yours. Oh, yeah. We, um, I let my kids, um, I was a little hesitant to do a garden this year because we did own a business over in town. Um,

15:28
at the time and we ended up shutting it down. But my neighbor down the street had offered to plow us a little garden and because my husband's tractor was not working at the time and so our tiller was broken, everything's broken. So he had texted me and asked me, he knew that I was wanting to learn gardening. And so he asked me if he wanted, or if I wanted him to plow us a garden and I said,

15:56
I would love to, but I think right now we're just so busy because I was running our business, plus homeschooling my kids, plus cleaning and cooking, and my husband worked full-time and traveled for work, so it was really busy. So we closed our business a few months ago, and I texted our neighbor and I said, I know it's late, but I think I'm gonna try a garden. So he came out and tilled me. It's about...

16:23
It's huge. It's way bigger than I actually needed, but I thought I'd rather have too much than too little and wish that he had done more So I've kind of divided it and I let my six-year-old and my nine-year-old plant their own little portions of the garden because I want them I want them to understand where their food comes from and I want them to be a part of growing things especially my picky eater

16:48
I feel like if he is a part of it, then he's more likely to eat things and make healthier choices. So we all three planted the same soil, the same garden. It's probably maybe 50 feet long. And my boy that planted on the left corner, his garden did way better than mine or my other boy, even though same seeds, same soil, same sun, same rain, same everything. So...

17:17
I'm a little confused as to what happened this year, but it's not good. Yeah, we have sort of the same situation in our little field. We actually ended up putting up a greenhouse where nothing would grow because we have gray clay underneath our dirt because we live just above where the river valley starts.

17:46
on our property. Yay. And so where the garden grows, we have like six to 10 inches of really good black dirt. And then underneath that is a bunch of gray clay. But at the end of the garden to the tree line, so like the garden again, it's all clay. You dig down a couple inches, it's clay. So if we hadn't known that and had planted, we would not get the same results.

18:13
as we do in the other part of the garden. It just depends on what's going on in that soil and underneath it. Yeah, we have red clay. We're red clay as far as the eyes can see. It's it's horrible. Yeah, yeah. I hear about red clay from people in the South a lot. Yeah. Well, when we lived in Georgia, you know, everybody talks about Georgia red clay. And when we moved to Alabama, I called my mom and I was like, wait.

18:41
There's red clay everywhere up here. It's not a Georgia thing. It's a Southern thing. So it is really bad. I think, you know, as we learn and grow with this whole homesteading thing, it's, you know, it's a, a work in progress. Um, and I, I've learned a lot this year of what not to do, what I want to do. Um, so next year I've got some pretty big plans on how to grow, um, not just grow a garden, but grow our homestead. And, um, you know, we.

19:11
We've got some great, well, I have some grand plans. My husband has different plans than I do. You know, there's different things that he wants out of our homestead dreams and different things that I want. We have had, in the past, we had a dairy cow. So I'm familiar with milking. And that is why I want another dairy cow. I currently drive 30 minutes every Thursday. So today's my milk day to go pick up milk from a local farmer.

19:41
but there's just nothing like having your own milk, but it is such a, it's a huge undertaking to do it yourself from, you know, the having the cow milking it every day. Well, we had trained hours to do once a day milking, but I'm really excited to get back to that. And I have a lot of goals of things that I want to learn. I wanna learn all of the home preservation skills.

20:05
I have not learned to can yet. I'm a little scared of it, but that is my goal for probably winter when things kind of slow down a little bit, you know, I wanna get into all of those things. Eventually to be pretty self-sufficient as close as we can. Awesome. I'm gonna tell you something about canning. Canning seems scary. Yes.

20:30
I did not want to can. I've told the story a few times on the podcast already, but I'm going to do it again. My mom canned in the hottest months of the summer, no AC, in Dean, where it was hot and humid in July, August, and September. And it seemed like the walls would sweat when she would plan. I don't have good memories of canning from growing up. However, my husband and I did it for the first time.

20:58
three summers ago in our house that luckily has central air conditioning. It did not make the walls sweat. We were okay. We did break a jar or two in the canner. That was fine. You just pour the, you just pull the cans out that didn't break, the jars out that didn't break. And then you drain the, the water from the canner into a colander in the sink and then the glass gets caught and you shake glass in the trash. You rinse the colander out and you start again. Nobody gets sliced.

21:28
Um, have not dropped a can on our jar on the floor yet. Thank God. And I suspect if you've never done it yourself before, once you do do it, you'll probably love it and you'll want to do it again. Yeah. Well, I had a unfortunate incident with, um, a pressure cooker, not a can or like an instant pot, but it was the off brand. And, um, this is years ago.

21:54
when we had our dairy cow and I was making yogurt. I had learned how to make yogurt in this off-brand instant pot. And I was homeschooling my boys. They were at the kitchen table doing their score and I had put the milk into the pressure cooker. And you have to boil it first. And I had it on the boil function. And for some reason, I guess I was distracted. You know, young kids will do that to you. And...

22:24
all of a sudden this thing just started wiggling and jiggling and making these weird noises. I guess because I was unfamiliar with it and also distracted, I walked over thinking, hmm, that's weird, and I opened it. Oh, no. Yeah, it was horrible. Scalding milk exploded, and it was waste. It was at my waist. The scalding milk exploded out of it.

22:53
I had second degree burns all across my stomach, all down my arms. Of course, I screamed and I was crying. My husband works from home and he'd come running upstairs and ask me what happened. I've never thanked God so many times in my life because normally my kids are under my feet. Had they been under my feet at stomach level, it would have got their face. It would have burned their face.

23:21
And I just remember leaning over the sink, praising God, thanking him so, so, so much for protecting my children. Not even thinking about the fact that my skin was peeling off because I was so severely burned. So that kind of imprinted in my mind with the whole pressure canning thing. And I know, you know, it's not likely that anything will explode. I think my

23:48
biggest fear with canning is botulism, that I would mess something up and not realize it. But again, I mean, that's like anything with homesteading. You've got to overcome that fear and just get in there and do it. Absolutely. Yes. And my mom always said, when in doubt, throw it out. If she had any question about anything she can, it went in the trash and we started again. You were saying that you have big plans and dreams for the homestead and your husband has maybe slightly different

24:18
plans and dreams for Homestead. My husband floated an idea the other day and I have learned to just listen and say, I need to think about it or I need to sleep on it because my knee jerk on a lot of things is no. Yeah. I've had to train myself to not do that because he thinks that I'm just being adverse and I'm not. My immediate thought on things that are going to cost a lot of money is no.

24:46
And so he floated this idea about how we could get a garage on the property and use half of it for a workshop and then on the other side of the garage we could do more gardening stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's telling me this grand plan and I know my face is doing the, I don't want to do that face. And he looked at me and I said, please don't read my face. I'm listening. I'm considering, can I think about it?

25:14
And he was like, well, we can't afford to do any of it yet anyway, so you have time. And I said, okay, good. And I slept on it for a couple of nights. And this morning, I said, you were talking about the shipping containers as the structures. And he said, yes. I said, if we can make them not look like shipping containers, I would be okay with that. And he immediately gets his phone out and pulls up pictures. Oh, goodness.

25:43
of people who have used shipping containers to do what he's talking about. And he said, it really doesn't look a lot different than the pole barn, does it? And I said, no, that would be fine. I said, luckily we have a couple of years to think about this, refine the ideas, and have the money to do it. Yeah. Well, one thing you might want to be concerned about with the shipping containers, because we thought about the same thing, not for your purpose.

26:10
We had a friend years ago that had a huge operation. He did all organic All-organic meat and he was big into As natural as possible, but he was also big into prepping and he wanted to get a shipping container To I think he wanted to bury it as like an underground bunker. Yeah, which I thought was a fantastic idea But he was mentioning that the problem he runs into

26:39
is a lot of them are coated with lead, which would be a health hazard. Because he wanted to, it's not pressure wash, like sandblast, to get it all off. And then you run the risk of that lead leaching into your soil, and especially if you're going to do gardening. So that kind of always stuck in my mind with the shipping containers. I don't know how you would find out if they do or don't.

27:08
Maybe something to keep in mind. Google knows everything. We will have to do some real research into that. Yeah. But either way, when my husband says, I was thinking, I say, yes, and? And he tells me, and I listen with as open a mind as I possibly can. And the biggest issue he and I run into is I process information really quickly.

27:37
And then I think about what I know about the thing that he's floating and that gets added in. And I'm at my probable answer within a minute. He processes slower than I do. So he comes up with an idea and he hasn't actually looked into it yet. He just fits it out. And so we've had not knockdown drag out fights about things, but because of the way we both think differently.

28:05
We've definitely had some discussions about things. That's kind of like me and my husband. I think about every possible scenario. I have already got it all planned out in my head and my husband, he's more thoughtful and he takes more time to process something. But you know that God created him different than me and he knew that we couldn't have two of me or two of him.

28:34
It works out good. Although my husband is usually the one that says no between us two because we're both dreamers. We both love to dream and plan. We just do it differently. We're kind of at a crossroads right now with a property beside us that it's an acre and a half property that was cut out of.

28:59
a 46 acre track and we bought 44.5 and then they cut the other one and a half out for an elderly lady that lived next door. She is currently in a nursing home and they're not expecting her to come back out. So eventually that property will come up for sale and when we bought this property, we signed first right of refusal that would guarantee that we would have the first shot at buying that if it came up for sale.

29:28
And I want that property so bad I can't stand it. And my husband is more like, yeah, we don't have the money to do that right now. And I'm like, okay, well, how can we get the money? What can we do? And I'm dreaming and I've already got, I've got this entire homestead planned out knowing that we're gonna own that land. And he just, he kind of shakes his head and hugs me and tells me, okay, honey, we'll see what we can do. But knowing that we probably won't ever get it.

29:57
It's fun. It is really fun to dream. And my husband and I years ago, like 20 years ago, we're talking about what our life looked like after the kids were grown. And we both wanted to live on at least an acre in a decent house where we could grow a big garden and have a dog and all those things. And we never thought that we would be able to actually do it. And some things happened. We lost a couple of parent figures.

30:27
and those parent figures were kind enough to leave us some decent fundage. And we thought, why not take that fundage and buy a place where we are really happy till the end of time for us? And that's how that worked out. But had you asked us 20 years ago if we'd be where we are now, we would have been like, we don't have the money to do that. Yeah. So you just got to have faith, I think. Yeah. And not just the money, but just the foresight.

30:57
to know, I mean, life is so vastly different now than it was 20 years ago. We're having to think differently, the way the world is going. It's being self-sufficient is so much more important now than ever. And I think there's this huge movement for people that want to be self-sufficient and want to go back to a simpler time.

31:27
want to actually homestead, still want to have a simpler lifestyle, you know, kind of as an escape from the craziness of what life is now. So I see a lot of people, especially younger people, that I wish that I would have been like that when I was younger and been into the homesteading thing. And you know, it's fun to see it, you know, to see so many people coming around to the idea of this type of lifestyle.

31:56
um, things that I want that my husband wants. I wish, I wish my daughter, my oldest is 21 and she has absolutely no interest in farming, homesteading, um, natural remedies, anything like that. And it hurts my heart a little bit, but you know, she's, she'll have to go her own path. Yeah. My oldest is also a girl. She's 34.

32:25
And I just talked to her yesterday and she was talking about how she's watching the pomegranates on pomegranate tree where she lives in Florida. My daughter lives in Florida. This girl is not, she's not a homestead and kind of girl. She loves the city. She loves clubs. She loves good restaurants. You know, she's not into the whole thing. And I was telling her that I usually have 10 episodes in the bank for the podcast.

32:54
record it ahead of time and that I was going to be lucky if I had five to put out next week. And she said, you know, mom, she said, I could be a guest on your podcast. And I said, okay. Um, why, how? And she said, well, we have lemon trees, we have lime trees, we have orange trees on a property. She said, and I've been watching those cause I'm ready for a fresh off the vine citrus fruit. She said, and I'm

33:24
it's just me and my husband here right now, so we're taking care of those trees for his mom. And she is not out in the country by any stretch. And she said, so we're doing some homesteading things. She said, and she said, my husband cooks from scratch all the time, he's amazing. Wow. I was like, I might just hitch you up at some point to have you talk about that, because you're riding that line between suburban and homesteading, and that's a great line to ride. So.

33:53
I have my daughter on at some point. I think that would be great. You know, I think there's so many people that think unless they have huge amounts of acreage or unless they know all of the skills that they're not a real homesteader or they're not gonna ever be able to achieve that type of lifestyle. But I mean, there's literally hundreds of different small things that you can do to be more self-sufficient, to work towards that goal.

34:23
Um, you know, that's one of the things that I have to, because I'm a, I'm a, I'm a big, um, if I don't do it huge, then I'm just, I'm not succeeding at it. And I've had to retrain myself in that, you know, that I'm in a season of life right now where I have young children and, um, when Hannah or oldest, when she was younger, I was, I was young when I had her. Um, so with my boys, I'm at a different stage in life. Um,

34:51
I see things differently, but life is very, very busy. And so I tend to get down on myself because I haven't learned how to can yet, or we don't have my dairy cow yet, or I stink at gardening. But it's just, it's one thing at a time, one skill at a time. So that's kind of my goal, especially now that we've closed our business down. We still operate an online business,

35:21
our storefront is closed down. So I'm home all the time now. And that's kind of my goal over the next year is to pick a skill and learn it instead of my normal. Hey, I'm going to learn 10 different things at the same time and then I get overwhelmed and I learn nothing. So with with the homemade homestead that it's a fairly new Facebook page that I started and

35:48
That's one of the things that I really want to start doing is having people follow along with me. So maybe I'm going to learn how to crochet. I really want to learn to crochet and work on that for a set amount of time. And then when I not necessarily master it, but feel comfortable with it, then I can introduce the new skill or canning. I'll start with water bath canning and then work my way up to pressure canning.

36:16
That way I can feel like I'm learning something and I'm not too overwhelmed. Yes, the only thing you learn when you try to learn more than a couple things at a time is that you can't learn more than a couple things at a time. Yes, yes. I'm great at multitasking when it comes to things that I already know how to do. But when I'm learning something, I'm the type of learner I need quiet and I want to

36:44
I don't want to hear you. I don't want to see you. I need to focus on what I'm doing. And there's no such thing as quiet in this house. So that has prevented me from a lot of the things that I do want to learn. And baseball season's about to start back. So we're going to be in the thick of baseball practice with two of my boys. And come spring, my youngest will start T-ball. Then we'll have three boys in baseball. And I'm going to have to learn how to still do the things that I enjoy because I don't want to.

37:13
I don't want to lose the love that I have for the natural, simplistic, homesteading lifestyle. And I feel like sometimes that gets overshadowed by the stressors of life. But it's exciting to me. I love to look and see how other people do it. It gives me ideas on how I can kind of streamline things. Because for my husband, if he's going to be involved in something, it has to be something that he sees as attainable.

37:43
So, you know, I need to sit down and write out a list of what's important to me, what I want, and then give that to him so that he can execute it. So you know, I've got, he actually is very open to pigs and a dairy cow. In fact, he thinks we should get a cow first. I'm not sure why, but I did not complain when he said it. Don't ask questions, just go for it.

38:12
So it's exciting that we've got so many plans and money always is a big factor. You know, homesteading is not cheap in a lot of ways. So, you know, as we were also right now, and this is something that I posted on our homemade homestead, we're doing the Dave Ramsey debt payoff plan. If you're not familiar with Dave Ramsey, he is fantastic. He's got a program called Financial Peace. I think it's called Financial Peace University.

38:42
So it's a way that you structure your finances to pay off all of your debt in an attainable way. And so that's what we're doing right now. We just sold my suburban, got rid of that car payment. We just paid off our truck, got rid of that car payment. And we're just chugging down the line so that we can start building more infrastructure around here and getting the animals that I want because they're not cheap.

39:13
Nope, they're not and you got to be able to feed them too. And that's not cheap. No, it is not. But I totally get what you're saying. Oh, I was gonna say something and now I just blanked out because I was thinking about all the bills we have to pay today. So, when my kids were young, and they're not young anymore, oldest is, I mean, youngest is 22, oldest 34. I was really busy too.

39:41
And I had to, like I had no choice. I had to learn how to work on things with it not being quiet. And it was one of the hardest things I ever did. And I learned that if I invited the kids into helping me with whatever I was doing, they were a little quieter. Like I learned to crochet when my kids were six. The youngest was six, next one was.

40:10
10, next one was 12. Oh wow. I think the oldest was busy doing other things. But they learned how to do the chain stitch and the single crochet, and that was about as far as they wanted to go. But they did it with me, they learned it with me. And if I was learning a new recipe, I would be like, you guys wanna come learn how to make, I don't know, chocolate chip raisin oatmeal cookies? And invariably the two younger ones were all in cause cookies.

40:39
Yes. And so all the kids learned the things that I was learning along with me, which was really fun. And I know your youngest is little, little, but soon, soon youngest will be big enough to kind of join in on the things you're learning if it's not totally dangerous. Yeah, it's hard. I think I'm the type that I'm very servant minded. I want to serve my family.

41:09
that for me that involves you're not coming in here and helping me. I'm going to do it and I'm going to serve you. And I've had to break that mindset, especially with my boys, being patient enough to let them come in and help me. And especially with the three year old, because he wants to be held. He wants to he's not very patient. You know, he just wants to get in there and do it. So it has been something that I've had to to really.

41:38
be intentional about and stop myself and say, hey, even though this is hard, I'm doing them a disservice by not allowing them to help me. So it's a learning curve for me because that is very hard. I would rather you go sit down and me do it all for you because mom is going to pamper her babies. But really, I'm just hurting them in the long run by not allowing them to help.

42:06
the more that you teach them about life skills, you are serving them for the rest of their natural lives. So I'm gonna encourage you to get them involved and teach them because number one, boys, boys don't get taught life skills the way that girls do usually. So you are actually doing them the biggest service ever by teaching them how to cook, how to sew, how to create, how to clean, how to do their own laundry, and...

42:36
When they get older, they do it themselves, which means you don't have to do it. Yes. Yeah. There's, there's, um, a lot of things that my husband teaches them. He's a lot better at letting them help. Um, but you know, it's a lot of it's the way that I grew up. I grew up, my mom, um, she, she did all the, she is the way that I am. And I learned it from her. So I didn't learn how to cook as a child. Um, you know, she didn't really teach me. How to.

43:06
hook or do now I did learn how to clean because she made us help to clean but you know with my boys I want them to not just learning the skills but being included in something and we're a very close family we spend a lot of time together and so if we're going to be spending time together we might as well be doing things that are functional and then learning something from it. So and that's a big benefit of having.

43:34
animals and having a homestead and gardening because it's good things that they can learn that are practical and I think when their minds are busy on something that's worthwhile They're less likely to get in trouble as they get older Yes, and as a God person you are a God person. Yes, I understand that God created the world and is like nurturing the world and

44:02
in teaching them to cook and garden and do those things, you are giving them the gift of nurturing that you believe in. Absolutely.

44:13
So I'm all for it. I think it's great.

44:18
Yep, it's exciting thinking about all the things that they're going to learn and they're getting older. And naturally, I want them to lean towards what we see important. And the only way they're going to do that is if they're taught it, especially when they're younger, it's more likely to stick. So I remember the first time when we butchered chickens and my daughter was absolutely mortified and how disgusted she was.

44:46
And she was a teenager and I remember her saying, that is so gross. I'm going to McDonald's. I said, Hannah, do you know where their stuff comes from? I don't care, I'm going there. And she was just so grossed out by it. So, you know, I think back to that and how exposure to things like that, now when my kids are younger and for them to have the appreciation that an animal is giving its life up for us to eat.

45:14
You know, and teaching them hard work, good work ethic. There's just so many benefits that this lifestyle provides for my children and for us. So it's exciting. I've got so many plans and this, I think talking about it kind of reignites some of those cause you know, you get kind of down and just kind of forget what your goals are. And so talking about it kind of reignites that.

45:43
Yes, absolutely. The more you talk with people like me and your tribe of people who are into the things you're into, the more things pop in and you're like, why not? Why not try that? I say why not more now than I ever have in my whole life. Yes, might as well. Why not try it? The worst thing that happens is it doesn't work and we try something else. That's right. That's me and gardening. I'm going to try again for a fall garden. So, you know, I learned a lot.

46:12
And it's just a learning curve, just like anything else is. Grownups have to learn it just like kids do. Yep, and the minute you stop learning, you might as well start digging the six foot grave because that's it. That's right. That is true. The more curious you are, the more you're willing to learn, the longer things last and the happier you are because you're feeding your brain. Absolutely, absolutely. All right, Crystal, I have really enjoyed this conversation.

46:40
Do not leave me when I stop recording because I need your file to upload completely. I keep meaning to tell people that at the beginning and I keep forgetting. Oh no. And thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'm gonna go plug my phone up. All right, thanks. It was nice talking to you. Bye.