Latest / Everyday Ancestral with James Barry / Cancer Was Next – Melissa K. Norris on How Modern Food Nearly Broke Her and Homesteading Brought Her Back

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Cancer Was Next – Melissa K. Norris on How Modern Food Nearly Broke Her and Homesteading Brought Her Back · Everyday Ancestral with James Barry

• 0:00
  I love learning about people's journeys.
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  I can't think of a more important journey than one that
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  involves our health.
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  And that's why I'm so excited to share my next guest,
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  Melissa Kay Norris.
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  She's known for her homesteading expertise.
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  Yet I found it very fascinating,
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  learning about how she came to homesteading.
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  Melissa Kay Norris has helped hundreds of thousands
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  of people each month raise their own food
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  and create a homemade and homegrown kitchen home garden
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  and barnyard through her website, her popular pioneering
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  today podcast, the pioneering today academy, and her books.
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  She is a co-founder of the Modern Homesteading Conference,
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  as well as owner of Norris Farmstead.
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  I am so excited for you to learn not only homesteading,
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  but also the first steps any of us can take
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  and getting control of the food that we allow
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  into our bodies.
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  Please enjoy Melissa Kay Norris.
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  What are your top three things from the past
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  that you're like, we gotta bring these into the present?
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  One is definitely the way that we cook.
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  And so getting back to a little bit more of slow
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  and by meaning that like doing fermented foods,
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  fermented foods take time.
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  They're not something that you open a package
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  and it's just there.
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  Getting back to sourdough, cultured and fermented foods,
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  they take time.
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  But for some reason we have this equation in our mind
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  that if something takes time, that it's really hard.
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  Like we think, oh gosh, that's gonna be time consuming.
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  Like that's a bad thing.
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  And it's not, and sometimes things do take time,
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  but it's not a lot of hands on time.
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  And that's really the case with like sourdough
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  fermented vegetables.
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  It truly is actually very little amount of hands on time.
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  It's kind of doing its thing without you.
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  You're just guiding it in a few places
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  and giving it the right conditions.
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  But you're really not, it's not like this hands on
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  super-involved process.
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  Like you can work it into a super busy lifestyle
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  without it being this overconsuming thing
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  or where you have to, you know, be there all day long.
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  But for some reason in our brains,
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  I don't know if it's the marketing that we've been fed
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  through, you know, TV and marketing campaigns
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  for the past 50 years, like do a TV dinner.
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  Taking the time and kind of that slow food mentality,
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  honestly has been less work overall for me
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  of like hands on, you know, working,
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  but you get all of these awesome, amazing benefits.
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  So it's kind of the best of both worlds.
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  But I would say that like home setters
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  and ancestral talking and kind of all of those things,
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  actually, I would say in the past probably six to eight years,
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  we've seen an upwards trend.
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  So I feel like more people right now
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  than say 10 years ago actually know about fermented foods
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  or are talking about fermented foods and gut health.
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  Like they've really started to kind of rise to the forefront.
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  But you know, like 10 years ago,
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  there was a lot of folks myself included.
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  I didn't grow up in a home.
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  We home set it, but my mom didn't ferment.
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  That wasn't something that they did.
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  And so I had never had truly fermented food.
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  Like I'd never had kimchi.
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  I'd never had like old fashioned actual like salt-brained pickles.
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  My mom did vinegar pickles.
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  I didn't really know anything about cultured food
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  other than yogurt, you know, but like I didn't know anything about it.
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  I didn't know how to make it.
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  I didn't even know the flavor profiles of them
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  because it just wasn't something I had been introduced to.
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  So thankfully, I think a lot more people are finding out
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  about them and talking about them now, which is really exciting.
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  But there's still a lot of folks that it's not what would be
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  considered a part of their normalcy.
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  That's such a good point that there's degrees of home setting, right?
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  It's like, sometimes I think we think of home studying
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  as just a blanket term of like, well, it's just DIY, you know,
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  just do everything, you know, on your own,
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  make your own house, yada yada, but there's really degrees.
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  And maybe that's how you distinguish modern home setting.
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  Can you kind of dive into that of like what makes, you know,
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  the home setting that you practice,
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  you promote different from someone else
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  who's promoting home setting?
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  I actually love this question because it's so funny.
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  When you say the word home setting,
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  you get very different reactions from people.
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  And so you have a lot of people are like,
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  there is no home setting act anymore.
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  Nobody is home setting.
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  You know, like they have this very black and white
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  like a line in the sand.
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  And I'm like, technically, correct.
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  There is not a home setting act as we know of historically,
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  you know, that that is ended even in Alaska,
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  you know, where in the US right now,
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  is there any home setting acts?
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  But the principles of home setting absolutely remain.
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  So for me, the principle of home setting
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  is becoming more of a producer than a consumer.
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  And I didn't actually coin that term.
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  I've heard it mentioned or phrased in different ways
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  for a number of years.
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  So I don't know who to actually give credit to.
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  But the principle is there's those varying degrees.
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  So start where you're at right now and apply that.
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  So of course, for some, it would be like,
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  yes, I want to produce absolutely every single thing
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  that we consume our home, our electricity
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  by being off grid.
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  You know, like you can really take it to the ninth degree.
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  But for most folks, it's going to be starting slow.
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  And I always like start in the kitchen.
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  Even if you're in an apartment,
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  everybody has a kitchen and everybody needs to eat.
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  Some form of a kitchen.
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  And so if you can start there with your food
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  and maybe you can't grow any of your own food yet,
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  anybody can almost do a little bit of herbs
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  in a windowsill, a sunny windowsill.
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  So there's some degree there,
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  but you're not going to be raising your own beef cattle yet
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  or maybe even able to do chickens yet,
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  if you live obviously in an apartment,
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  that's going to be very difficult.
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  Though I'm sure someone out there has figured it out
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  and is doing it.
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  But my point being is look at what am I buying?
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  Is it all pre-made?
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  You know, or what do we eat on a really consistent basis
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  that I'm buying from the store that's already been done for me?
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  So bread, for example, are you buying bread from the store?
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  Well, instead of buying the bread,
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  can you take the basic ingredients,
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  flour, salt, water, yeast, if you're not doing sourdough
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  and make your own bread and do that
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  until it becomes a part of your really normal routine.
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  Like without even thinking you've got it worked into your schedule,
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  you know how to make it, it turns out great.
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  And once that becomes that habit
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  that you don't really even think about it anymore,
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  go ahead and add the next thing in.
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  So you're slowly producing more of what you're consuming
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  instead of only bringing in things
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  that are already done for you.
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  And you can apply it to all different things.
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  Maybe it's, you know, learn how to make your own soap
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  or a simple all-purpose cleaner.
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  There's all different aspects
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  that we can take at your skincare.
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  The kitchen is where I like to start
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  because it's so foundational
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  and anybody can do some of the kitchen stuff
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  like no matter where you're at in life
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  and it can be applied immediately.
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  I love that because it's a simple start,
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  but also it puts emphasis on your uncontrolled ingredients
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  and I imagine it also lowers your cost.
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  Have you ever done the analysis of like how much someone
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  can save by just making their own bread,
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  for example, or some of their own food
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  opposed to buying it already pre-made?
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  It's phenomenal, actually, because if you're buying,
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  you know, say even you're starting small
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  and you're buying like 10 pound bag of flour,
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  I buy flour by the 50 pound pack.
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  So I'm trying to think back, it's been so long.
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  Like what is the smallest bag of flour?
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  You can buy five or 10 pounds.
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  I'm pretty sure you can get it at the grocery store.
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  That is funny.
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  You can like measure your kind of like advancement
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  with something by how big of a bag you buy, right?
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  Right.
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  But you think about like, as I often will say people were like,
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  well, my gosh, like to cook from scratch,
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  like it's so expensive.
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  But if you're dividing it out by weight, it's not.
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  I have never in my personal experience,
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  I have never had it be more expensive to make it from scratch
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  if I'm actually doing the calculation
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  of ingredients by weight.
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  Because what happens is that, you know,
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  people look at a bag of potato chips or something, right?
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  That's actually very little weight.
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  They're doing it by a price per package.
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  Or even like soda pop, like we'll have people say,
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  oh my gosh, raw milk is so expensive.
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  Yet they buy pop.
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  But there's pending how many, you know, maybe two bucks,
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  I don't actually know how much like a 20 ounce thing
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  of soda costs because I don't drink it.
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  You're paying for, I think they're like 20 ounces now,
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  I don't think they're 16 ounces anymore
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  for like the plastic individual bottles.
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  And they're like, oh my gosh, but this gallon of raw milk
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  is so much money.
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  Well, if you were actually to do that volume comparison
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  per dollar, it's really not.
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  And then the health aspect of it,
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  let alone the dollar amount, right?
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  Just greatly increases it because there is,
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  it might not be immediate,
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  but I think for a lot of people,
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  especially now are beginning to realize the cost
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  of that cheap food, right?
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  That processed food, the cost it has to your health
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  may not be immediate,
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  but you will pay it down the road one way or another.
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  So when you put those two together,
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  it has always been cheaper.
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  And even up front financially, it's always been cheaper.
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  I have found to make it from scratch.
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  Yeah, it's such a hard thing for people to understand.
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  I mean, I grapple with that a lot
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  because some people will say like,
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  oh, well, pluck seems so expensive.
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  And I'm like, well, eat the organ meats.
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  Just they will be cheaper because it's the freeze drying process
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  that increases the price so much.
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  So I'm like, go ahead, eat the organs, do it.
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  But clearly, if they're coming to us,
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  they're probably not doing that.
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  But I'd rather have you get it in than not get it in.
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  So you have to figure out what works for your lifestyle.
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  But I find it really interesting
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  because people will think it's so expensive.
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  But I'm like, but you know, there was one point
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  where you weren't paying $70 to $100 for a cell phone.
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  And where did that money come from?
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  And why is that so important?
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  Why is spending literally, I think it works out
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  to be like 25 cents a serving?
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  Why is that expensive?
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  But yet you're willing to pay some streaming service,
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  you know, 1999 or 999 a month and pay for five of them.
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  So this idea of like what value we put on things
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  is really skewed.
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  And I think people don't see the correlation of like,
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  if you buy things that are not nutrients now
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  or you buy things that are really ultra processed now,
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  you will pay it later.
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  There's no situation where you don't pay it.
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  100% and I think two of those James,
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  like I don't think that people oftentimes,
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  I think the problem is people don't attribute
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  the health issues.
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  And I'm talking in general senses, right?
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  There's a lot of people that have realized that
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  and I'm one of them.
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  But overall in our general Western society,
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  I don't know that people actually have the correlation
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  that the health issues that they're suffering
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  and that they're dealing with.
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  One, that it's not normal.
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  And two, that it is attributed to their food.
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  I don't know that a lot of people have actually
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  made that correlation.
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  And I think oftentimes people don't even realize
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  you shouldn't be feeling that way.
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  That's not normal.
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  But because it's been their normal for so long,
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  they don't realize you shouldn't always be inflamed.
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  You shouldn't always be exhausted.
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  But a lot of these things are a result of yes,
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  or food industry, some of it is lifestyle.
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  Like, you know, there is a combination there.
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  But if that's all you've ever known,
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  they don't even know the difference.
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  And again, if you go to, you know, a doctor
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  and, you know, I have high blood pressure,
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  like they'll probably change you like,
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  oh, you know, you should try to change your diet.
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  But there's so many things that people deal with
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  and diets never discussed because doctors
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  don't take nutrition in medical school.
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  I think they have like maybe even,
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  I don't even know if they have a full two days.
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  They do not go through nutritional training at all.
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  And so they can't teach what they don't know.
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  So, and there's some great doctors out there.
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  So this is not a bashing our medical system overall.
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  But there is a lot wrong with it.
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  And people just don't realize the impact
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  that the food that they eat has on their health and well-being.
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  Well, a lot of people just know you as a homster,
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  but they don't realize that you actually have your own history
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  within the kind of medical or pharmaceutical industry.
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  You kind of went through your own health journey
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  that really it sounds like it carried you to homesteading.
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  Can you talk about that?
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  Yeah, it brought me back to homesteading
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  and it like times a hundred.
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  So I was a pharmacy tech for a little over 18 years.
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  During that time, we still interestingly enough,
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  like we were still raising our own beef.
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  We saw it a garden and I was canning,
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  but I was also cooking, we were mixing that
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  with like a lot of processed things from the store
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  because I was working, was commuting 36 miles every day
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  and working at the pharmacy.
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  We'd get home about seven o'clock at night
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  with the shift that I had.
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  And so we would have like our own grass-fed,
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  grass-fed-ish ground beef,
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  but I would mix it with these sides of jars
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  and packets and things from the store.
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  According muffin mix, not understanding anything
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  about good healthy fats and so vegetable oil
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  and canola oil, Chris go.
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  They make me cringe now.
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  So I guess thankfully I did still have the good grass-fed
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  grass-fed-ish beef, amen.
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  But you know, all the other things on the side.
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  I experienced after I had my daughter, my second child,
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  really bad, gird and stomach ulcers.
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  And so I was on prescription medications
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  up to six times a day and different ones.
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  Some were proton pump inhibitors,
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  which shut off the pumps that pump the acid
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  into your stomach if those are on overdrive,
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  which is a very common thought
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  as to why people suffer from gird.
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  The ulcers and that I was developing
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  because of the acid and wasn't being stopped
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  by being on those other prescriptions,
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  I was taking basically, it's a chemical bandaid
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  that would coat your stomach lining
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  so that you could eat without the pain from the ulcers.
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  None of it was working.
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  And so they sent me in to have an endoscope
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  because they were like, you know,
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  kind of to get in there and see what's going on.
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  You know, none of our traditional treatments
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  are working and it was really young.
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  And had gotten down really, really thin.
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  I was like, like size four pants for falling off of me
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  just because eating was so painful.
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  So anyways, so I went in and had the endoscope done.
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  And when I woke up, they said, we found two spots
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  so we ended up doing a biopsy on,
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  which had never entered my mind at 29
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  that there could be a possibility of cancer at all.
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  And so that was like, oh my gosh.
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  And we got the results back, thankfully it was benign.
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  So I didn't have cancer,
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  but both on my upper stomach and my esophagus,
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  I had erosion and I had cellular change,
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  which would be like the precursor to pre-cancerous cells,
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  basically.
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  So the specialist said, you have got to figure out a way
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  to one, come off of the medications you're on,
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  your general practitioner should have never put you
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  on the doses that you have been on
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  for the time period you've been allowed to be on them.
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  So you've got to come off of them.
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  And you have to figure out a way to control this
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  by the food that you're eating.
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  This has to be controlled by diet.
• 15:08
  If not, the next time you come back to see me
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  and we do this, your biopsy results will be very different.
• 15:14
  Sounds like a rare doctor to recommend.
• 15:17
  It's extremely rare.
• 15:18
  Extremely rare.
• 15:19
  In fact, the funniest part, not funny,
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  I definitely believe that God directed me to the specialist.
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  He was only in our county one day a month.
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  I happened to get the specialist on the one day a month
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  that he was in our area.
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  It was very incredible.
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  Especially now was I look back like how blessed,
• 15:38
  I was to have this practitioner.
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  So we live really far out.
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  I'm like an hour away from almost anything.
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  And so I remember driving home.
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  I still remember it to this day.
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  I was driving home and I had this stack of papers
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  on the passenger seat beside me
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  that he had given me to, you know, going over food
• 15:54
  and in common foods that the trigger asked
• 15:57
  that all these different things.
• 15:58
  And I remember when I was driving home
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  and like this was a very distinct moment in time.
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  Like where I had a choice right there
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  to figure it out, you know, to dive into it
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  to fully commit, you know, dig in.
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  Or I could continue just going on the path
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  and I could ignore that.
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  And I probably wouldn't be here now,
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  because this was, you know, 15 years ago.
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  I wouldn't maybe be here when my kids graduated high school
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  or got married.
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  I feel like that it has been life saving for me.
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  So I'm very passionate about it if you can't tell.
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  So I did, I set out and really at that point in time
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  because we're going back quite a, quite a few ways
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  that nutrition and food wasn't talked about the way it is today.
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  Thankfully, like there's a lot more conversation
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  and a lot more information available out there for people.
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  And so I just used Google and the internet
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  and it was dial up at the time, I had dial up internet.
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  And I just started researching everything about our food
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  and the ingredients and the way it was grown
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  and the way that it was processed and GMOs
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  and high fructose corn syrup, I mean, food dial.
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  Like I just joked down the rabbit hole of information
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  and everything that I started discovering and reading.
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  I just was like, I'm cutting everything out
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  that is a genetically modified ingredient.
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  Anything that has food dial in it, you know, we're cutting out.
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  And if it's an ingredient that I can't pronounce
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  and or I don't know what it is
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  without having to look it up and really research it,
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  then it's not coming into our house
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  and I'm not consuming it.
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  So I had to throw out a good portion of my pantry.
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  And I was shocked because I started reading ingredient labels.
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  I didn't read ingredient labels really before then.
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  I mean, I was so surprised to see what food dial is in things
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  and how much soy is in like everything,
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  how much at that point, like high fructose corn syrup,
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  like is in everything at that point.
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  And so I threw it all out
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  and then just brought back in ingredients
• 17:55
  that I felt good about.
• 17:56
  So I'd always used butter.
• 17:58
  I'd never been a margarine girl.
• 18:00
  But instead of Crisco, I brought in coconut oil.
• 18:02
  No vegetable oil, canola oil was allowed.
• 18:04
  So we started using avocado oil and real olive oil.
• 18:08
  Just things like that.
• 18:09
  And it was amazing because I had been suffering
• 18:13
  with that gird and on those prescription medications
• 18:16
  at that point for a few years.
• 18:18
  Within six months of taking all of that stuff out,
• 18:23
  I was able to get off every single one of the medications,
• 18:26
  not have the stomach acid,
• 18:28
  the ulcers would could heal
• 18:30
  and I've never had to go back on them.
• 18:32
  That was just six months of changing food.
• 18:35
  People need to take this in.
• 18:38
  As you started this out talking about how we have this idea
• 18:41
  that if it takes a long time that it's hard, right?
• 18:44
  We also have this idea that getting healthy is hard.
• 18:48
  It's only hard because we struggle
• 18:50
  to make the decision to do it.
• 18:52
  Once you decide to do it, it's not as hard as you think.
• 18:56
  Yeah, especially when you see the benefits
• 19:00
  and the change in the way you feel,
• 19:02
  really quickly actually.
• 19:04
  Like if you're actually paying attention,
• 19:06
  I think that's it.
• 19:07
  I don't think we pay attention a lot to our own bodies.
• 19:09
  I think we kind of have a disconnect sometimes
• 19:12
  on the way we feel.
• 19:13
  So if you start paying attention to, okay,
• 19:15
  I just ate something.
• 19:17
  How do I feel 30 minutes later?
• 19:19
  How do I feel that night?
• 19:21
  How is my sleep quality affected?
• 19:23
  If you start to actually pay attention to that,
• 19:27
  you'll be amazed.
• 19:29
  You'll start to see correlations.
• 19:31
  I would almost add that it's important to track it
• 19:34
  because I imagine that first month
• 19:37
  compared to the six month if you weren't tracking it,
• 19:39
  you might forget how you felt in that first month,
• 19:42
  six months later.
• 19:43
  You start to think that your current state
• 19:45
  is your normal and you're forgetting how bad it was
• 19:48
  and that's when people slip back to old habits.
• 19:50
  Well, interesting thing too is,
• 19:52
  and I'll have to say like travel is one of the hardest things
• 19:55
  because when I'm traveling,
• 19:56
  sometimes you're just at the mercy
• 19:57
  of what's available of where you're traveling.
• 19:59
  If it's if you're not traveling like in a car
• 20:01
  where you can take some of your own food
• 20:02
  and go where you want to,
• 20:03
  but there's been times where I've been flying it
• 20:05
  in cities where I didn't have a rental car or the ability.
• 20:08
  I was kind of just at the hotel
• 20:09
  and what restaurants were around.
• 20:11
  But what's interesting is,
• 20:13
  I think because I am now used to my body
• 20:16
  for the most part being in a state
• 20:18
  where it feels so much better
• 20:20
  that then when I do consume those things,
• 20:22
  it's almost like more of a flare.
• 20:25
  Like I really feel that difference.
• 20:27
  I'm like, ooh, like I can't wait to get back to
• 20:31
  where I can eat what my normal now is
• 20:34
  because I feel the difference right away.
• 20:37
  That's fantastic that you have a new gauge
• 20:40
  for what normal is, you know?
• 20:42
  Now, I feel like though,
• 20:45
  you're bringing up something
• 20:47
  that has not talked about that much.
• 20:48
  At least I don't hear it talked about much,
• 20:50
  which is I think people assume
• 20:54
  that when we say home setting, it equals healthy.
• 20:58
  And I think you're revealing, that's not always true.
• 21:01
  And I remember when you and I first met,
• 21:03
  we had a conversation about another conference.
• 21:07
  You host a fantastic conference
• 21:09
  called the Modern Home Setting Conference,
• 21:12
  but we talked about another conference.
• 21:14
  And I said to you,
• 21:15
  everyone that was walking on was extremely overweight
• 21:18
  and I was surprised
• 21:20
  because they weren't really interested in organ meats.
• 21:22
  And I just had assumed that home starters would be interested.
• 21:25
  And you were like, nope, that's not always the case.
• 21:29
  Can you dive into that a bit?
• 21:31
  Like what's your experience with home setting
• 21:34
  and kind of the association or expectation
• 21:39
  of what it means?
• 21:41
  So it's interesting because you have some people
• 21:44
  who are coming to home setting
• 21:45
  because they very much don't like that their food source
• 21:49
  for the most part is dependent on supply chains,
• 21:54
  is dependent upon grocery stores
• 21:57
  that they don't have any control over it.
• 22:00
  And so you have people that turn to home setting
• 22:03
  from that desire or pain point, right?
• 22:06
  They're like, I want to know that I have got food on the shelf
• 22:09
  that I can grow some of it myself in order to have a way
• 22:13
  to replenish it if I can't get it from the store
• 22:16
  that I'm not reliant on, you know, the stores
• 22:20
  or the establishment, you know, kind of insert
• 22:22
  whatever way people would describe that.
• 22:25
  You have some of those folks that are coming in there
• 22:26
  like, okay, I am just wanting to learn
• 22:28
  how to create my own food systems and all of that.
• 22:32
  And so they're not really looking at it
• 22:34
  from a health standpoint with their cooking.
• 22:39
  They're like, I'm gonna cook from scratch,
• 22:41
  but it might not be with lard or with tallow,
• 22:45
  but at least they are on the path of starting to be like,
• 22:48
  I, you know, wanting to be more independent
• 22:50
  and wanting to make some of those things
• 22:52
  even if they don't have necessarily the best of ingredients yet.
• 22:56
  Where other people come to home setting
• 22:59
  and I would say I would include myself more in this
• 23:01
  because I had a health issue.
• 23:04
  I had a health issue and I saw that food was the answer to that
• 23:08
  and the more I dived into the way that our food is produced
• 23:11
  in the US, I realized I need to produce more of it myself
• 23:16
  and or support and find companies
• 23:19
  that are producing it in a better way.
• 23:22
  We produce our own beef, but looking for regenerative agriculture
• 23:25
  on the items I can't produce myself.
• 23:27
  You know, looking for farms, we don't grow our own wheat
• 23:30
  and I, you know, make sourdough and bread.
• 23:32
  So I'm looking for flour sources that are heritage grains
• 23:37
  or that use regenerative growing practices.
• 23:40
  Of course, aren't using, you know, synthetic herbs
• 23:42
  and pesticides is important to me too,
• 23:44
  but also their farming practices.
• 23:46
  It was kind of like this one thing leads to an X.
• 23:49
  And so I think that a lot of people first get the draw
• 23:52
  for home setting for the people that haven't had their health
• 23:55
  affected or don't realize that their health is being affected
• 23:58
  yet.
• 23:59
  It tends to be more of, you know,
• 24:01
  I want to get away from, you know, from the man
• 24:04
  and I want to get away from the establishment
• 24:06
  and I want to take control of my own food supply
• 24:08
  and I want to take control of my own, you know,
• 24:10
  family and home and that type of thing.
• 24:13
  And they just haven't realized the health part yet.
• 24:17
  And it's interesting because this shows up in so many things,
• 24:22
  you know, in my 20 years in the health industry of like
• 24:24
  people assuming if it's organic, that means it's healthy.
• 24:27
  That's organic doesn't necessarily mean it's healthy.
• 24:30
  You could have organic sugar, organic chocolate,
• 24:33
  things that could be organic that are not going to help you
• 24:38
  with your health.
• 24:39
  It's the same thing I see it a lot with kosher.
• 24:42
  People assume if it's kosher meat that it's healthy,
• 24:44
  you know, that the cows were raised healthy and humanely.
• 24:48
  And it's like, no, it's just,
• 24:49
  it's really commenting on how they're slaughtered.
• 24:52
  So in general, I think there's this category of terms
• 24:56
  that people assume are part of a healthy diet,
• 25:00
  a healthy lifestyle and it's just like not, not always.
• 25:03
  Like gluten-free is another one.
• 25:04
  They think, oh, if you're gluten-free, you're healthy.
• 25:06
  You're like, no, it just, it just means there's no wheat and gluten.
• 25:09
  There's so many people that are eating gluten-free
• 25:12
  that are extremely unhealthy, you know?
• 25:13
  So it's like in products as well.
• 25:16
  I love this conversation of like, it's more about steps, right?
• 25:21
  It's more about baby steps, having some grace, you know,
• 25:25
  with each one, but eventually getting to a place
• 25:28
  where really it's about youth thriving.
• 25:31
  So how do you feel in your body?
• 25:34
  So you already kind of shared some nice first step
• 25:38
  for people, you know, focusing on the kitchen,
• 25:40
  just starting to make one thing from scratch.
• 25:43
  But I have to imagine like you're a fifth generation homesteader.
• 25:47
  You went through this process as health journey.
• 25:51
  What do you find even today where you're considered
• 25:55
  a really key voice for homesteading?
• 25:59
  And people look to you, but I imagine you still probably
• 26:02
  have your own struggles with your own homesteading, right?
• 26:06
  Like it doesn't just go away.
• 26:08
  Like, oh, I figured it all out.
• 26:10
  And now I'm just coasting or does it?
• 26:13
  Kind of with anything in life, right?
• 26:15
  Like you do reach a point where I don't want to say plateau
• 26:18
  because we think of plateau as a negative oftentimes, right?
• 26:21
  But I think in your journey, you'll kind of reach a point
• 26:23
  where you're like, okay, like with where I'm at right now,
• 26:26
  like I'm feeling pretty good with, you know,
• 26:29
  with the workload, with how to do these things,
• 26:32
  it's kind of become a part of my routine.
• 26:34
  And you definitely feel like I feel like I go
• 26:37
  through different levels of healing.
• 26:40
  So in the beginning, it was getting my stomach healed
• 26:43
  to a point where I could just eat food without being in pain
• 26:47
  and having, you know, ulcers that were literally starting
• 26:49
  to eat away, the lining of my esophagus and my stomach.
• 26:52
  And so once I kind of reached that point,
• 26:55
  then it was like, whoo, you know, and that was a lot of work
• 26:57
  because I had to read you ingredients and learn how to cook
• 27:00
  different things and all of those things.
• 27:02
  But I reached a point where that level felt like my new normal
• 27:07
  or felt normal.
• 27:09
  And so kind of stayed there for a little bit
• 27:13
  and then started to realize there was some other things
• 27:16
  that were going on, but it was kind of like you have to put
• 27:18
  out that biggest fire first.
• 27:20
  So whatever's burning the hottest, whatever's the biggest issue
• 27:23
  like you put that out and then you're like, whoo.
• 27:25
  And then started to notice in this analogy, right?
• 27:28
  Like, oh, there is some like little hot spots here.
• 27:30
  Maybe there's like some little like cracklings,
• 27:32
  like little flames here.
• 27:34
  What does that mean?
• 27:35
  And so then went on to like the next level of gut healing.
• 27:41
  And for me, that was definitely tied to thyroid.
• 27:45
  So I had adrenal gland issues.
• 27:47
  I had some thyroid issues.
• 27:49
  And so really starting then to focus on that aspect
• 27:53
  of my health.
• 27:53
  And some of that was food.
• 27:55
  Some of that was lifestyle, you know,
• 27:58
  there's so many things kind of kind of put in there.
• 28:00
  And so felt like I got to a point like, okay,
• 28:02
  where those levels are where they should be.
• 28:04
  You know, kind of gotten energy back.
• 28:06
  And then now I'm, I'm 44 and welcoming to the world
• 28:10
  of perimenopause, right?
• 28:11
  So then there's women's hormones that change
• 28:13
  when you start to enter into your forties.
• 28:16
  And so now I feel like, you know,
• 28:17
  I'm on a new journey with that and figuring that out
• 28:22
  from a holistic standpoint.
• 28:24
  And how do I support that with my food
• 28:27
  and with my diet and lifestyle changes?
• 28:29
  And so I think as long as we're living,
• 28:31
  I think it's always gonna be a journey.
• 28:34
  And we just will learn to go deeper with that healing.
• 28:38
  Because also our bodies as we age and even cleaning up my,
• 28:42
  my diet as much as I'm able to,
• 28:44
  you know, the sad reality of it is
• 28:46
  is we're still exposed to toxins.
• 28:48
  You know, there is sadly traces of glyphosate in the rain.
• 28:51
  So even though I live way out far have never used that,
• 28:54
  there's no farms around me that use that.
• 28:57
  There will always be toxins that we can't control
• 29:00
  that will be introduced into our system.
• 29:02
  And so not to be like, oh gosh,
• 29:03
  like the sky is falling, doom and gloom.
• 29:05
  But realizing that it's gonna be a continuing healing journey
• 29:09
  because there's always gonna be things
• 29:10
  to a degree introduced to our systems
• 29:13
  that, you know, a hundred years ago wasn't even a thought
• 29:17
  and wasn't something that our bodies had to learn
• 29:19
  how to deal with.
• 29:20
  So it's always an ongoing journey in, in my mind,
• 29:23
  but I think that you reach different levels of,
• 29:25
  of healing or you get one thing put out
• 29:27
  and then that allows you to see the next area.
• 29:30
  But I have to say, even today,
• 29:33
  like dealing with some of those things,
• 29:34
  like I still feel so much drastically better
• 29:39
  than I did when I first started.
• 29:41
  So it's not like going, going backwards.
• 29:43
  I feel like you just kind of hit new, new levels.
• 29:47
  I feel like it's almost like the peeling of the onion
• 29:49
  within your health.
• 29:50
  There's always layers, different layers.
• 29:52
  And sometimes, as you mentioned,
• 29:54
  certain layers have to be peeled before others are revealed.
• 29:57
  Like sometimes your body is in such extreme mode
• 30:01
  of survival that it won't even reveal what's at the core yet.
• 30:06
  Let's say a skin rash, you know,
• 30:08
  until you deal with the skin rash,
• 30:09
  it's not gonna reveal the next thing that's going on
• 30:11
  because the skin rash is masking the other thing, you know?
• 30:15
  I think that's a really an interesting analogy around health,
• 30:19
  but do you find that that's true even with,
• 30:21
  if we take that analogy and we equate it to home-steading,
• 30:25
  is there kind of a peeling of the onion around home-steading?
• 30:28
  And if so, what layer of the onion are you at
• 30:33
  with home-steading?
• 30:34
  One of the exciting things about home-steading
• 30:36
  is there are so many things to learn and do with home-steading.
• 30:41
  I mean, it's literally such a wide umbrella
• 30:44
  that you'll never be able to do it all and master it all.
• 30:48
  And to some people that might sound defeating to me,
• 30:50
  that sounds exciting because I love to learn,
• 30:52
  like I'm a lifelong learner.
• 30:54
  And so I like knowing that there's always gonna be more
• 30:56
  for me to learn in this lifestyle.
• 30:59
  But that being said, with a home-steading,
• 31:02
  like there definitely is,
• 31:05
  I think you have to really be honest with your evaluation
• 31:07
  of where you are right now.
• 31:09
  So for example, we have raised our own grass-fed,
• 31:12
  grass-finished beef for 23 years.
• 31:16
  And when we first started out,
• 31:17
  it was just with a cow calf pair.
• 31:18
  And so we could breed the cow back every year
• 31:20
  and the calf when it was two years of ages
• 31:22
  is what we would butcher for our own meat.
• 31:24
  And then we started to expand because we're like,
• 31:25
  well, if we raised two, we could sell one.
• 31:28
  And then that would make our meat almost free, right?
• 31:31
  Kind of helping to offset the cost
• 31:33
  and not counting labor costs at all,
• 31:34
  but just hard cost of feed.
• 31:36
  Now we've reached a point where we have a herd of 29 cows,
• 31:40
  which means that we have about seven to 10 beef
• 31:44
  to sell a year to community, we don't ship.
• 31:46
  So local community only with the beef.
• 31:48
  So that part has been over the past two years
• 31:51
  that we were able to increase our herd said
• 31:53
  we went from nine to 29.
• 31:55
  And so during that time, we haven't raised any pigs.
• 31:58
  We used to raise pigs alongside that,
• 32:00
  but increasing a beef herd, tripling the beef herd size,
• 32:04
  also triples the work.
• 32:06
  We've cut back from raising the pigs,
• 32:08
  and then we were raising a lot of chickens and ducks
• 32:13
  for the community aside just from us.
• 32:15
  Because I know what a difference eating food
• 32:18
  that is raised regeneratively, in my opinion, raised right,
• 32:22
  right, ethically morally, all of those things.
• 32:24
  Soy free feed, not using corn,
• 32:27
  using proper pasture rotation, all of those things
• 32:32
  is super important to me.
• 32:34
  And I wanted people in my community
• 32:36
  to also have access to that
• 32:37
  if they couldn't raise it themselves.
• 32:38
  Because not everybody can.
• 32:40
  However, we reached a point where we were like,
• 32:44
  okay, doing it at this level
• 32:46
  while my husband still works a day job off site.
• 32:49
  I am working between three to four other jobs
• 32:52
  in between some of my different companies, et cetera,
• 32:55
  was like, we can't keep up at this level.
• 32:59
  And so I think that's really important for home setters
• 33:01
  to realize that there is ebb and flows,
• 33:03
  and it is okay to realize just because you've been doing
• 33:07
  something or it is a really good thing.
• 33:10
  I think it is very good to be able to raise food in this manner
• 33:14
  and offer it to folks who can't.
• 33:16
  However, we had to scale back for this season.
• 33:19
  And so recognizing that is kind of hard
• 33:22
  because I really do want to do it all.
• 33:25
  And I want people to have access to that level of food as well.
• 33:30
  So I think it's important with home setting to realize
• 33:33
  you can't always do it all,
• 33:35
  even though there's so much to be done
• 33:37
  under the home setting umbrella.
• 33:38
  So hopefully that makes sense,
• 33:39
  but that's where I'm at right now
• 33:40
  because I still wrestle with that.
• 33:42
  Like we just have to set that part aside.
• 33:45
  I don't have to raise chickens for other people
• 33:46
  who right now, just for us and that's okay.
• 33:49
  I have to be okay with that.
• 33:51
  Well, you weren't talking about before we recorded
• 33:54
  about the seasonality as well.
• 33:55
  Can you share it?
• 33:56
  Because seasonality is really key for any home setter, right?
• 34:00
  I mean, if you're living off the land,
• 34:03
  I move from the West Coast, Portland, Oregon to Massachusetts.
• 34:07
  And I am not a home setter,
• 34:09
  but yet I am clearly now beholden to the seasons
• 34:13
  because when it snows, it snows.
• 34:16
  Like it changes your life.
• 34:18
  So I imagine that's even 10 to 100 times
• 34:21
  when you are actually living off of your land.
• 34:23
  So can you talk about seasonality and how that shows up
• 34:27
  not only outside of you, but within you?
• 34:30
  So what's interesting is looking at,
• 34:32
  to what you talk about a lot,
• 34:34
  is to that ancestral part of us.
• 34:35
  So when you look at the way that animals and plants
• 34:39
  live within the seasons, right?
• 34:41
  So they have the time, of course,
• 34:43
  where they're in their growing and their flourishing part.
• 34:46
  And so that usually starts in spring
• 34:48
  and really goes through summer.
• 34:50
  But then as we start to approach fall and winter
• 34:53
  for both livestock and plants,
• 34:56
  they begin to store their energy
• 34:59
  to go into the hardships of winter and or dormancy,
• 35:02
  depending on, you know, plant or animal.
• 35:05
  You've got where your plants are starting to store energy
• 35:06
  for your perennials back into their root system.
• 35:09
  You know, you have the annual plants
• 35:11
  where they're creating your flower head to create that seed,
• 35:13
  which will then become its growth for the next year.
• 35:16
  And so oftentimes as humans,
• 35:18
  we tend to want to live in that always going
• 35:21
  and go, go, go, go, go season.
• 35:23
  We don't really give ourselves much of permission
• 35:27
  or even being intentional about setting it
• 35:29
  to have some of that dormancy season.
• 35:33
  So many people find themselves in burnout stage.
• 35:36
  And because I have a really strong drive,
• 35:40
  people tease me and they're like,
• 35:40
  you're a hummingbird, do you ever stop?
• 35:42
  Like you're always going from this to this to that.
• 35:44
  And I do enjoy that, but I have found
• 35:47
  that I can't be as effective
• 35:49
  and I do reach a point of burnout myself
• 35:52
  if I don't pull back, but I have to be intentional
• 35:55
  about it because it's not my normal tendency.
• 35:57
  And so really watching nature,
• 36:00
  both with our livestock and with the gardens
• 36:02
  and with the plants and everything,
• 36:04
  and seeing how they have to have that season of dormancy
• 36:09
  in order to have that growth for year after year after year.
• 36:12
  And if they don't,
• 36:14
  then you will see those plants
• 36:16
  and those livestock become weaker and weaker and weaker.
• 36:19
  They can still keep going for a while,
• 36:21
  but you do see that diminishing.
• 36:23
  And so being cognizant of that
• 36:25
  and also trying to mirror that within my own seasons
• 36:28
  with the seasons of my life
• 36:30
  and what I'm doing within nature season.
• 36:32
  So at the time you and I are recording this,
• 36:35
  of course, we're in the middle of winter.
• 36:37
  So trying to make sure that I take time
• 36:41
  to spend some slow time by the fireplace in the evenings
• 36:47
  just recharge my batteries with things
• 36:49
  that aren't necessarily work
• 36:51
  or aren't necessarily home-studding.
• 36:53
  So that in spring and summer,
• 36:56
  I could hit the ground running and be recharged.
• 36:59
  And so for me, that's something I have to be super intelligent
• 37:02
  about, but intentional about as well.
• 37:05
  I feel like you're bringing up something
• 37:06
  that applies to everyone,
• 37:09
  no matter whether you're a home-ster or not,
• 37:11
  but I imagine it's really important
• 37:13
  within the home-studding community as well
• 37:15
  because I feel like you're basically saying,
• 37:18
  don't be so hard on ourselves.
• 37:19
  Don't expect that we have to do everything.
• 37:22
  Everything in our life has to be home-steading all the time
• 37:27
  and that we sometimes have to honor our own state
• 37:30
  of like, hey, it's winter and I just,
• 37:33
  I don't wanna be working as harder now.
• 37:35
  I need to be in kind of like repair mode
• 37:37
  and taking better care of myself, whatever it is
• 37:41
  and preparing for more output later on.
• 37:44
  I feel like that's advice we all need,
• 37:46
  but I have to imagine that a lot of home-sters,
• 37:50
  specifically when they choose this path
• 37:52
  after having some contrast,
• 37:54
  that they probably get really hard on themselves
• 37:57
  and they're like, I have to make everything from scratch
• 37:59
  and you know, like, is that kind of true
• 38:01
  or can you kind of share some of these myths
• 38:04
  or whatever that people associate with home-studding
• 38:08
  and maybe even debunk them?
• 38:11
  Oftentimes you do see that.
• 38:12
  You see people are like, yes,
• 38:14
  I have to make everything from scratch.
• 38:16
  If I'm not making things from scratch,
• 38:17
  like somebody's gonna come take my home-setter card,
• 38:19
  which there's no such thing as a home-setting card
• 38:21
  and being trying to be funny.
• 38:23
  Also with the producing part,
• 38:25
  there's a myth that like, you should be producing
• 38:28
  all of your own stuff, like if the ultimate home-setting goal
• 38:31
  is to produce every single thing
• 38:32
  that your family consumes on your own home-set.
• 38:35
  And while we produce a ton, like we raise all of our own beef
• 38:38
  and for us I raise all of our own poultry needs
• 38:40
  so from our meat chickens and ducks to eggs
• 38:44
  we're not raising your own pork right now.
• 38:46
  But pretty much almost all of our own protein
• 38:48
  we're raising ourselves.
• 38:49
  Now we didn't have a dairy cow a couple of years ago
• 38:52
  so at that point it was even producing all of our own dairy.
• 38:54
  We don't have anywhere.
• 38:55
  She passed away from a breech birth.
• 38:57
  But my point being is people have this thing
• 39:01
  that like I should be producing everything.
• 39:03
  But when you look at the home-setters of old
• 39:06
  and little house on the prairie even
• 39:08
  because for most people that's like been a historical context
• 39:10
  at least that they've read or are familiar with,
• 39:13
  they didn't produce everything themselves.
• 39:16
  And we shouldn't be trying to produce everything
• 39:19
  to ourselves right now either.
• 39:20
  What we should be doing is creating a community sufficiency
• 39:24
  in a more local source and working together for that.
• 39:29
  So there's some local farms that I found
• 39:32
  that I can order pork from.
• 39:33
  There's a local dairy that's down the road from us.
• 39:36
  So I'm getting my raw dairy.
• 39:37
  I get to go and see the cows.
• 39:39
  I get to go see the dairy anytime I want
• 39:41
  so I can see cleanliness.
• 39:42
  I can see how they're handled and all of that.
• 39:44
  But that's been really great because I can support
• 39:48
  someone else in my community
• 39:49
  because we can't all do it all ourselves.
• 39:52
  So doing the things that you enjoy doing
• 39:55
  that maybe you don't have another local source
• 39:57
  from or make the most sense,
• 39:59
  but then working together within our local communities
• 40:02
  so that my money that I'm paying for that raw milk,
• 40:05
  which absolutely after producing my own milk
• 40:08
  and having it, well, I should say my dairy animal
• 40:09
  and the work that goes involved with that,
• 40:11
  it is worth every penny that she charges.
• 40:13
  I don't think that people understand the amount of work
• 40:15
  that goes into producing food
• 40:17
  until they've taken it on themselves to a level.
• 40:20
  You see the price much, much different
• 40:22
  on what to pay for things when you've put in that work.
• 40:25
  But that allows us to have other people
• 40:29
  be able to make a living and production wise.
• 40:33
  And I think that's really important.
• 40:35
  I love to be able to support someone else
• 40:39
  and also get something really great in return,
• 40:42
  but that money's going directly back into my community.
• 40:45
  And it means that I am not having complete burnout
• 40:49
  by having the burden of trying to do everything myself.
• 40:53
  It's such a great point.
• 40:54
  It's definitely something I've noticed
• 40:56
  as I've dived into the more of the homesteading communities
• 41:00
  is how giving and community base they are,
• 41:06
  they're sharing tips.
• 41:08
  There isn't this kind of that you see in sometimes
• 41:11
  other communities or even other careers
• 41:14
  where people are holding the way they do it
• 41:16
  tightly to their chest.
• 41:17
  If anything, I feel like I don't see any of that
• 41:21
  in the homesteading.
• 41:22
  I mean, is that your experience that everyone's like,
• 41:24
  oh, well, let me show you what's working for me
• 41:26
  that it's more of that value add and heart based offers?
• 41:31
  Yeah, I would say predominantly in the homesteading community
• 41:33
  is very open-handed because people are so excited,
• 41:37
  because most of the time most people's lives are changed
• 41:40
  to some degree or another when they start homesteading
• 41:42
  or it was the reason that they started homesteading.
• 41:46
  In my case, that we really went the level
• 41:48
  that we did from where we were at.
• 41:50
  And so they're so excited because they're like,
• 41:52
  they feel that it is life changing
• 41:54
  and so they're so excited that someone else like,
• 41:57
  oh, let me help you.
• 41:58
  You know, let me give you my advice.
• 42:00
  Let me give you my wisdom.
• 42:01
  Let me tell you what's worked for me.
• 42:02
  Let me tell you what hasn't worked for me
• 42:04
  so that you can jump into it that much sooner.
• 42:06
  And even though there's a lot more awareness
• 42:10
  of homesteading in the modern context
• 42:13
  and all the health and stuff like that,
• 42:15
  it still is not what I would call mainstream.
• 42:17
  A lot of people who are doing it feel lonely.
• 42:21
  And so when they find somebody who seems to be interested
• 42:24
  and it's like, yes, they're so excited.
• 42:26
  So yeah, there's a lot of open-handedness,
• 42:28
  a lot of sharing, a lot of community based relational
• 42:33
  because it very much has been true across the board.
• 42:37
  And it's one of the reasons
• 42:38
  modern homesteading conference that we see every year
• 42:40
  is we see people come back every year
• 42:42
  and they have made friends with people
• 42:45
  that they met the year before
• 42:46
  and have been able to form that.
• 42:47
  And so it's almost like a homecoming
• 42:48
  like a little family reunion.
• 42:50
  And so it's really cool to see that.
• 42:52
  I don't think that you see that so much
• 42:54
  in communities that are maybe gathered around other topics.
• 42:57
  What was the catalyst for you to start that?
• 43:00
  Because as you mentioned, you had enough going on.
• 43:03
  You didn't necessarily need another thing
• 43:06
  and planning an event is a huge, huge undertaking.
• 43:10
  But I have to imagine it clearly mattered enough
• 43:13
  for you to do it.
• 43:14
  So what made it matter so much?
• 43:17
  I had been speaking mainly on the East Coast,
• 43:21
  in Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia,
• 43:23
  and a lot of different homesteading conferences
• 43:25
  for a number of years.
• 43:27
  And I would have people in my audience
• 43:30
  shared where I was going and where I was gonna be.
• 43:32
  And they're like, is there anything on the West Coast?
• 43:35
  Like I can't travel all the way to the East Coast,
• 43:38
  but if there was something on the West Coast,
• 43:39
  like I could make that work.
• 43:41
  For a number of years, they just said,
• 43:42
  no, but as soon as I hear of one, like I'll let you know.
• 43:46
  And after about three years, I'm like, there isn't one.
• 43:49
  There's not one on the West Coast
• 43:51
  and I don't know if anybody doing it.
• 43:53
  I knew I couldn't do it by myself.
• 43:55
  And so my co-founder and in partner with them
• 43:58
  on our home sitting conference, Katie Millhorn,
• 44:00
  she was one of the only people on the West Coast
• 44:02
  that was also traveling to the East Coast
• 44:04
  to help put on these conferences.
• 44:06
  And so I just asked her and like,
• 44:09
  I can't do it by myself,
• 44:10
  but would you be interested in putting one on here
• 44:14
  on the West Coast?
• 44:14
  And she's like, yeah.
• 44:16
  And so we decided to do it.
• 44:19
  And mainly because when I went to these other conferences,
• 44:22
  like I said, I've been home sitting,
• 44:23
  you know, my folks lived just quarter mile up the road
• 44:25
  for me, they've been home sitting.
• 44:26
  So I do have some homesteaders in my area
• 44:30
  like directly in my community, which is fabulous.
• 44:33
  But when I went to the conferences
• 44:35
  and I saw all of these people there
• 44:38
  and I have had been home sitting for decades at that point
• 44:42
  and we learned things, my husband went with me too,
• 44:44
  and we learned things from other people at those conferences
• 44:47
  that we came home and implemented
• 44:49
  and completely changed the trajectory of our homestead
• 44:52
  and things that we were doing.
• 44:54
  And I was like, oh my goodness,
• 44:56
  I didn't know I was missing this.
• 44:57
  Like I didn't know how powerful being surrounded by people
• 45:01
  and learning from other people at the same time,
• 45:04
  but all in this really intense two day period,
• 45:07
  it was life changing.
• 45:08
  And so I'm like, okay, it's kind of like one of those things
• 45:11
  like sometimes you want to be invited to a table
• 45:13
  and you never get invited to the table.
• 45:14
  So it's like, woman is build my own table
• 45:16
  and invite people to that table.
• 45:17
  Kind of what we did for the West Coast
• 45:19
  so that there was an opportunity for people
• 45:21
  who couldn't travel to the East Coast
• 45:24
  that they could have an event in the West Coast.
• 45:26
  So that was really how it was born.
• 45:29
  Why do you think there wasn't really anything
• 45:31
  established on the West Coast?
• 45:32
  It's such an interesting thing to think about
• 45:34
  like because clearly it does make sense, you know,
• 45:37
  as America evolved, it started East Coast moved West
• 45:40
  but there are lots of farms on the West Coast.
• 45:43
  So what is it that you think is the difference
• 45:46
  between the East and West when it comes to either home
• 45:49
  studying practices or just more of the teaching
• 45:51
  of home studying?
• 45:53
  I don't know why there wasn't any put on in the West Coast
• 45:56
  as far as I know in my own personal experience,
• 45:58
  home setting conferences themselves,
• 46:00
  like dedicated home setting conferences,
• 46:01
  like there were health and wellness conferences.
• 46:03
  I know there've been farming conferences,
• 46:05
  probably gardening conferences,
• 46:07
  but in actual home setting itself conference,
• 46:10
  the first large ones anyways that I know of was,
• 46:14
  I think like 2017, 2018,
• 46:18
  and they were on the East Coast.
• 46:21
  I think that people saw those,
• 46:23
  it was home search of America,
• 46:24
  they started to hold kind of several,
• 46:26
  they had one or two a year I think conferences back there.
• 46:30
  And so I think people were going to them back there
• 46:33
  who lived there because they heard about it
• 46:35
  in that area they could travel.
• 46:36
  And then it was kind of more an awareness,
• 46:38
  like seeing like, oh, like people are wanting
• 46:40
  to come to this, this is a needed thing.
• 46:43
  And so I think it was just kind of more of an awareness
• 46:45
  back there that first happened.
• 46:48
  But yeah, there's lots of home sets on the West Coast.
• 46:50
  There's actually a lot of farming on the West Coast as well.
• 46:53
  So as to why there wasn't one beforehand, I don't know.
• 46:58
  This has been great.
• 46:59
  And before we actually end, I know that you've written,
• 47:03
  you know, multiple books on home setting,
• 47:04
  you've written gardening books, food preservation.
• 47:08
  But you're also kind of getting into baking, right?
• 47:11
  So is a baking book coming up soon
• 47:13
  or can you kind of share a little bit about
• 47:16
  why baking's been becoming like a passion for you?
• 47:20
  I should say cooking with baking is really, for me,
• 47:24
  it's coming back to that foundation of food.
• 47:26
  So I love growing and raising my own food
• 47:28
  from both livestock to fruit and to vegetable production.
• 47:32
  But really when it comes back to being in the kitchen
• 47:36
  and I think part of it for me is so my oldest, my son,
• 47:39
  has officially moved out.
• 47:41
  He's almost 20.
• 47:42
  He's moved out.
• 47:43
  It's kind of that sentimental a little bit
• 47:45
  and of course, bittersweet.
• 47:47
  But now I find that I will bake what are his favorites
• 47:50
  or cook his favorites.
• 47:51
  And so now I will just send him a video or a text
• 47:54
  with a picture of it as a way to bribe him to come home,
• 47:57
  come over and visit and get this.
• 47:59
  And so for me is really coming back to the kitchen
• 48:03
  because it was so foundational.
• 48:05
  It was in the kitchen first that I, you know, found healing.
• 48:08
  I feel the older I get
• 48:11
  when I make recipes that were my great grandmothers
• 48:15
  or my grandmothers or now my father-in-law has passed away
• 48:19
  and so has my grandmother-in-law on my husband's side.
• 48:22
  But when the holidays come and I make their recipes,
• 48:26
  it's almost like they're still there.
• 48:30
  And so I find this emotional connection to cooking
• 48:34
  that I don't know that I had as deeply before.
• 48:37
  I've kind of found a renewed passion
• 48:40
  for being in the kitchen and making things
• 48:43
  and also seeing that with other people as well.
• 48:47
  I love that that the baking is connecting you
• 48:50
  to reconnecting your family.
• 48:52
  I actually thought maybe it was
• 48:53
  that when you went down the health journey
• 48:55
  that you pulled away from baking
• 48:57
  because maybe it wasn't as healthy for you
• 48:59
  or it wasn't part of the healing diet
• 49:02
  and that maybe you've gotten to that enough healing
• 49:06
  that you could bring it back in.
• 49:08
  Is there any aspect of that?
• 49:09
  There is aspect of that as well
• 49:11
  because there was a period where I did cut out
• 49:15
  gluten and grains and carbs for a while to do a gut reset.
• 49:18
  But yeah, now I can bring it back in of course.
• 49:20
  Now it's sourdough, ancient grains
• 49:23
  and I do have the revised updated version
• 49:26
  of my first cookbook handmade that's coming back out this May
• 49:28
  where I've got to take the past eight years
• 49:31
  of what I've learned and updated and had new recipes.
• 49:35
  So that part's been really fun.
• 49:36
  It's coming out this May.
• 49:37
  It's available for pre-order now.
• 49:40
  But I also have gotten to be a point
• 49:41
  where I can reintroduce those things as well.
• 49:44
  And some of them I've adapted in a making it sourdough now
• 49:48
  before where I wasn't necessarily doing it sourdough.
• 49:51
  So that part's been really fun though
• 49:52
  to be able to bring those items back in
• 49:55
  in a way that is healthier and more gut-friendly,
• 49:58
  if that makes sense.
• 49:59
  Yeah, because in a sense I think sometimes
• 50:02
  we go on these journeys, these health journeys
• 50:04
  and then we think that we have to kind of
• 50:06
  lift these very strict, kind of almost bland lives
• 50:10
  and not have as much vitality around the food choices
• 50:13
  we make and the happiness that sometimes comes with food.
• 50:16
  So I love that your journey that you shared
• 50:19
  started with, this is how we, homestead, this is how
• 50:23
  I was taught to homestead to then realizing
• 50:26
  I'm not thriving, I'm sick to then reinventing it for yourself.
• 50:30
  And then not only have you reinvented it,
• 50:34
  but you're really amplifying it so that more people
• 50:37
  can discover how to get control of their food systems
• 50:42
  and how to better take care of their health
• 50:44
  through making their own food.
• 50:46
  So thank you so much for your journey.
• 50:50
  I'm sure there were lots of points where that was not fun,
• 50:54
  but the amount of joy you've been adding
• 50:56
  to people's lives, the community that you're not only
• 51:00
  building, but expanding upon supporting other people
• 51:04
  and building is a huge, huge blessing for all of us.
• 51:08
  So when you shared that you felt blessed
• 51:11
  that that doctor saved you in a sense
• 51:14
  or kind of showed you a different light,
• 51:16
  I believe that you have really paid that forward.
• 51:20
  Oh, thank you.
• 51:22
  You mentioned you have a pre-order,
• 51:24
  where can people find this pre-order for your book,
• 51:27
  where can they connect with you and learn from you?
• 51:31
  Yeah, everything is at mulescaneoris.com,
• 51:33
  which is my website.
• 51:34
  So mulescaneoris.com, you'll see my podcast there,
• 51:38
  you'll see at the top little menu,
• 51:39
  there's a shop tab, you'll see the book tab,
• 51:42
  see all of that there.
• 51:43
  It's kind of the hub for everything.
• 51:46
  Thank you so much.
• 51:47
  You understand for it by the way.
• 51:48
  Okay, funny story.
• 51:50
  So my middle name is K-A-Y, so mulescaneoris.
• 51:53
  And when I first started blogging,
• 51:57
  I thought that I was going to be a historical fiction author
• 52:00
  of all things.
• 52:01
  And so I started my website with my name
• 52:04
  because as a fiction author,
• 52:06
  your website would be your name.
• 52:09
  But mulescaneoris.com was already taken.
• 52:11
  Someone had bought the domain,
• 52:13
  but there was no website for us.
• 52:14
  And so at that time,
• 52:15
  I didn't have any income from an online world at all.
• 52:18
  And so I was like, well, I can't buy that domain.
• 52:21
  It's too expensive, but mulescaneoris,
• 52:24
  which was my middle initial,
• 52:25
  was available for super cheap.
• 52:28
  And so I bought that and started that blog and website.
• 52:33
  And now it's evolved to what it is today,
• 52:35
  but that's the reason for the case.
• 52:37
  It's in there.
• 52:38
  You know, I had to admit,
• 52:39
  like so the woman who started PaleoFX,
• 52:43
  her name is Melissa Norse.
• 52:44
  I thought maybe it was her.
• 52:46
  Oh, how funny.
• 52:47
  I know she's behind the scenes a lot
• 52:49
  for even though PaleoFX isn't happening
• 52:51
  anymore,
• 52:52
  but she is behind the scenes.
• 52:53
  And she's been a part of the health scene
• 52:55
  for a long time specifically the Paleo one.
• 52:58
  But yeah, I have to wonder if it was her who owned it.
• 53:00
  Who knows?
• 53:01
  Oh, it might be have no idea.
• 53:03
  Thank you again for joining me.
• 53:05
  Anyone that is thinking about it,
• 53:07
  I'm sure this will air before the 2025 event.
• 53:11
  But any year you listen to this,
• 53:13
  definitely cannot recommend enough
• 53:15
  that you check out the Modern Homestead in Conference.
• 53:18
  I've been to now I think four,
• 53:21
  just different homesteading events
• 53:22
  and it's absolutely my favorite
• 53:24
  and it's such a beautiful community.
• 53:27
  So thank you and your partner for creating that.
• 53:30
  Oh, thanks so much.
• 53:31
  I know you're gonna be back
• 53:32
  for this year.
• 53:33
  I'm super excited about that and doing demos.
• 53:36
  But yeah, we would love to have anybody come
• 53:37
  to the Modern Homesteading Conference.
• 53:39
  It's just modern homesteading.com
• 53:40
  is the website for that for the conference.
• 53:42
  Yeah, I'm right at home and it's fantastic.
• 53:44
  So check it out.
• 53:46
  They'll be there in the show notes.
• 53:47
  Thank you, Melissa.
• 53:49
  And thank you all for joining us this last hour.
• 53:53
  Please spread the news,
• 53:55
  share about the podcast,
• 53:58
  check out Melissa's stuff
• 54:00
  and stay curious more to come.
• 54:03
  Thank you.
• 54:04
  Thank you.
• 54:07
  Thank you so much for joining me on everyday ancestral.
• 54:11
  If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe
• 54:14
  so you don't miss the next one.
• 54:15
  You could find the show notes,
• 54:17
  links and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com.
• 54:20
  That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K dot com.
• 54:26
  And hey, if you know someone
• 54:28
  who'd get something out of this,
• 54:30
  share it with them too.
• 54:31
  Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.