Latest / Everyday Ancestral with James Barry / From Suburbia to Self-Sufficiency: Carolyn Thomas on Building a Thriving Homestead and Family

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From Suburbia to Self-Sufficiency: Carolyn Thomas on Building a Thriving Homestead and Family · Everyday Ancestral with James Barry

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We're going to have to be really intentional to navigate life in our modern world in a way that
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gives us a healthy existence ourselves, but also gives our children physical health, but also
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mental and spiritual health. That is not what's being offered to us. And so we're going to have to
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do this really intentionally and be really careful about what we do.
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Welcome to the first episode of Every Day Ancestral. I am beyond excited to share this journey
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with you. And there's no better way to kick things off than with Carolyn Thomas as our guest.
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Carolyn and her husband Josh are the heart behind homesteading family, a resourceful and inviting
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community for anyone curious about homesteading, self-sufficiency, and making life just a bit
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simpler. They live on a 40-acre homestead in Idaho surrounded by gardens, livestock, and children.
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Carolyn spends her day rocking babies, homeschooling her children, and preserving food for the coming
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winter. In her spare time, she teaches homesteading skills to encourage other families to live
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simply and focus on things that really matter. Faith, family, and really good food.
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Carolyn, it's so good to be speaking with you now, where I'm those and you're not those.
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It's great to get to be here. I have been so curious. What came first? Home
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studying or babies? Oh babies, definitely. Home studying came out of babies. Josh and I
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always had some like inkling of love of this lifestyle before we even knew that it was a lifestyle.
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Like we both had a little bit back there, but it all really kind of started to come together for
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us after our first baby was born. We purely by accident ended up going with a midwife and having
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a natural birth and it's kind of funny. Most people don't have that happen by accident, but we
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had a situation with our health insurance where we didn't realize until we were already pregnant
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that we were cut out of any maternity care. So we were like, okay, we know how expensive births
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are, hospital births are. So when somebody said, hey, once you look into a midwife, it's a lot
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cheaper. We were like, okay, sounds like a good option. So it was really a financial decision.
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Now it's now I've had everyone with a midwife. But at that point, we had baby with a midwife
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in a birth center. So it's a very different experience than a hospital birth where in the hospital,
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you kind of get put right into the program with the pediatrician and the baby is right on to schedule
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with the doctor. When you're with a midwife, they had to say, okay, now you need to go start doing
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your well-baby visits. And so we went to our first well-baby visit with a doctor and the doctor
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said, you know, hey, you need to get your first vaccines for this little newborn. And so we kind
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of asked a few questions. And looking back now, I know so much more. I wish I had known then.
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The doctor actually laughed at us when we questioned the safety of vaccines. We were just hearing
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little rumblings at that point where like, are these safe? Like, do we know where it's safe?
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And the doctor said something very condescending like, hey, if you want your child to stay alive,
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you're going to get the vaccines or something like that. So we just kind of said, okay.
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This wasn't really that long ago, right? So what year was this?
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This was 2005. So we went ahead and we got the vaccines. He told us, you know, the nurse is going
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to come in with two shots for the baby. And so the nurse proceeded to come in and she gave
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the baby three shots. Now when your mom and dad holding down the screaming, struggling baby,
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you know, every single shot that goes into that baby. So we're like, no, that was three shots.
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We know we felt each one, you know, and went home that we didn't really think anything of it.
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We just thought, oh, the doctor misspoke, you know, the experts know what they're doing, right?
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So we went home and the baby had a vaccine reaction that night. He screamed,
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our oldest son screamed all night long, didn't sleep, feverish, terrible reaction. And so we
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called the office the next morning and lo and behold, they had only recorded two shots.
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This isn't even about vaccines for us so much. It's more that we saw this happening. We saw
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that third shot go into the baby and we never even questioned it because we were such good
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patients, right? We were such good students. We had been trained to just trust the expert and let
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them do the thinking and we just deal with the repercussions of it. But this was such a moment for
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us to wake up and go, we still don't know what was given to our son. Luckily, he recovered completely.
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And you can bet, though, what we did after that was we dove in and we started researching.
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And it started with vaccines, but it really quickly moved to food. And we started realizing what
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we were eating and what we were buying from the store. We just were like, we can't feed our family
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this food. This is not how we want to eat. We really want to give our children and ourselves really
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the gift of robust health. And that just wasn't going to happen if we weren't stepping into the
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driver's seat of our own story and getting out of that passenger seat where we were just like,
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okay, we'll just do what we're told. And so that for us actually was the beginning of homesteading.
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It was the beginning of all sorts of things. It was like spark started flying off of that.
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And then we started realizing, you know, the delivery systems of just-in-time groceries.
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And we realized, you know, really what was going on in the medical industry. And we really
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started looking at the education side of things and even the entertainment side. And it just kind of
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like blew our world open to realize we're going to have to be really intentional to navigate life
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in our modern world in a way that gives us a healthy existence ourselves, but also gives our
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children physical health, but also mental and spiritual health. That is not what's being offered
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to us. And so we're going to have to do this really intentionally and be really careful about
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what we do. I think now looking back where we're sitting here in 2024 and looking at the state of
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the world, we go, thank you that we got those early warning signs and, you know, we really heated
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that call. But doing that sent us on a whole different life trajectory than we had been on at that
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point. I mean, that's incredible. So you've been on this journey going on 20 years. I'm sure any
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parent that's listening this understands that feeling of like you feel like your doctors should know,
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they do know that they're here to take care of you. And I do, I remember those feelings,
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both confusion and concern when we were facing those questions. So I felt a lot of emotion as you
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were sharing that. Can you share a little bit more detail though? What was your life like then? So
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you guys, neither of you grew up on a farm or you did. And then secondly, were you living in like
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an apartment where you still on a farmhouse then? Like how far was this leap? Because obviously it
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starts with the research. But then how do you get from pre that to now you actually own your
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homestead, you know, your own farm? We definitely aren't coming from generational homesteading.
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But both of us do have some experience in our childhood. We had some experience with animals,
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a little bit with gardening and a little bit with country life. We both had a childhood that
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took us in and out of the city at different periods of our life. But you know, when we got married,
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we were living in the suburbs of Los Angeles. We were in a second story apartment building.
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There was a little bit of we were country kids at heart. But we hadn't ever really like learned
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that lifestyle all the way around. I was into horseback riding. So I knew a lot about horseback
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riding and about horses. My mom had always kept a few chickens here and there and she'd have a
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garden wherever we lived, whether we lived in the city or wherever just for a couple of fresh
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vegetables. But Josh had worked on a cattle ranch. So he knew a little bit more about livestock and
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had spent quite a bit more time out in the country as a boy. And so it kind of knew the ins and outs
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of that a little bit more. But we didn't really know anything about growing your own food to like
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survive off of to actually fill your pantries, fill your freezers and to be able to consume and
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live off of it and really reduce the need to go the grocery store. We certainly didn't know anything
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about herbal medicine for some of the natural modalities of medicine. So there was a really big
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learning curve for us at the point where the story happens that I was telling you about having
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our first child, we had actually gotten to move away from the suburbs of Los Angeles back up into
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our hometown in the mountains. And we were on this little smaller than a quarter acre lot,
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we had this tiny little house. It was so cute, great little starting spot. But we did have a little
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bit of room for a little bit of a garden out back and we raised a few chickens. So we actually
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really learned a lot in that particular place. But yet for the most part we were really starting
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from scratch. What were your jobs at the time? I may imagine if you were in LA, what were you doing?
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Josh was in construction. He had his own company that he had started doing finished carpentry
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in homes in like the Hollywood area in West LA. So really kind of upper end homes.
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I was a teacher, a fourth grade teacher at a private Christian school. And then once we were getting
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close to our first child being born, I went ahead and stopped work at school and started doing his
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bookkeeping for him for the construction business and trying to figure out how to do that, which was
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mind blowing to me. I didn't know anything about construction or bookkeeping. So I had to learn
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multiple new things. Plus learning how to work with your spouse is a whole skill all by itself,
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I think. So yeah, that was kind of a journey we were on. But again, it really had nothing to do with
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home-steading or farming or anything like that. How big of a leap was it once you did the research?
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You know, and you were getting clear like, okay, what we're doing is not working. We need to change.
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So what was kind of the first change that you incorporated? That was, you know, bigger than just
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like a mental or mind shift change. I'm talking like literally physical change.
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I think the first physical thing I incorporated was learning how to make bread actually. And it was
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starting to learn how to actually work with healthy grains and change the way we were eating grain.
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And so we wanted to go with a little bit more of either soaked sprouted or fermented grain.
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And we wanted to move towards whole grains. So what I did was I did the mistake that every, well,
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maybe not everybody makes, but definitely I jump in with two feet. I went right out and I bought
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a grain mill and I found some red hole wheat as all I could find from that health food store.
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I had to buy it in the little baggies. I couldn't even get like a big bulk. I was in the middle of
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Southern California. You don't go just get bulk bags of things like we do here in Idaho.
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And followed a recipe and ended up making a little brick that Josh very kindly was like,
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this is so good. Keep making it. And I was like, it's inedible. I could use it for a door stop.
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What do you want with this thing? It really was. It was so awful, but he was a good
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encourager and kept me going until I actually learned how to make bread, which now I teach people
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how to make bread that's actually good tasting and light fluffy actually slices doesn't crumble apart,
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you know. But yeah, that was probably one of the first changes. We started gardening that happened
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right after that kind of all at the same time and really started making our own food from scratch
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much more seriously. Just our meals and got rid of the box rice errone stuff and all of these
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different packaged foods and started to learn how to actually cook those things from scratch.
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And that is a skill that will take you a long ways if you just learn that.
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Did you have any kind of mentors at that time because I mean back then there really weren't many,
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right? No, I really didn't. Again, we were in the middle of Southern California. Luckily,
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I had, you know, my mom was an excellent cook and had taught me how to cook growing up. And just
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by modeling it, she was very insistent that we had good homemade meals on the table at least
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twice a day breakfast and dinner. And so I really had gotten that and my mom lived very close by,
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so I was able to talk to her quite a bit. But when it came to the things like getting into food
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preservation or, you know, making bread, she really hadn't dove into those types of skills.
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And so at that point, it was some books here there. YouTube wasn't, I don't think it was really
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a thing. At least I wasn't aware of it if it was. And the internet was much more like the Wild West
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than it is now. Like there weren't just blogs all over the place with all these SEO articles so
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you can find them of like really clear step-by-step photos. You just didn't have that. And I didn't
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know anybody who was doing these things. I was totally on my own. So I had a lot of trial and error,
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just kind of diving in and reading a lot of reading. Did you lose any friends as you started going
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down this path? You know where people were like, you're weird or like, what are you doing?
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Yeah. We had a lot of people who had no idea what we were doing. Our life just started to change.
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In Southern California, you have one child and then you have a second child. And it was like,
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okay, you're done now, you know, especially a boy and a girl. People think, hey, that was tidy.
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Wrap that up. And then we just kept having kids and kept having kids. And people just did not know
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it to do with that. They're like, are you Mormon? They're like, what is going on here? Definitely.
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Yeah. We got a lot of that sort of question. Are you Mormon or Catholic? And we were like,
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can we check other? We don't fall into those boxes. It was definitely a very refining moment
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for us in a lot of ways because most people didn't get it. Now there were a few who were very
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interested. And like, wait, what are you doing? I've always wanted to do that. How do you do that?
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Will you show me? So it became a passion for Josh and I to actually share with people who were
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interested, but didn't know how to find the resources to learn. And that's something that I've
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always been very good at is researching and finding resources even if they're pretty obscure.
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And so I just determined that I wanted to take that skill to learn things, take the time to
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learn of myself and then to be able to help other people who either didn't have the time to do
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the research or didn't know how or didn't have the resources. And to start teaching them how to do
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the same things. That's beautiful. So that's really when homesteading family took shape or
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what year would you say you kind of got clear on, oh, this is what we're going to brand it. This is
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how we're going to start monetizing all these things we're doing. That was not till years later.
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We just started sharing amongst our friends at that point. We were still in Southern California
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in the mountains. So we had moved from our little quarter acre land. We had really over engineered
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that. We like filled it to where there were like chickens popping out the corners and fruit trees
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hanging over the edge like we had filled every square inch we could of that little piece of land.
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And we were kind of like, okay, it's time. So we moved up to five acres and we started to really
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fill that up. Still in LA County or no, we were outside of Los Angeles. We were in Riverside County
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up in the mountains, a couple hours, but two and a half hours outside of Los Angeles. So it was a
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really nice, very rural area. We found a spot, a couple miles back a dirt road surrounded by
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forestry on three sides. So it was like as rural as you got, we were at the end of the road.
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We just kind of went to town learning everything we could and we really honed in raising livestock and
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butchering gardening. But we were still, you know, Josh was still working at his regular job and I
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was still helping him in business. And it wasn't until we eventually got up here to Idaho.
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Things had shifted after the 2008 crash. We were in a different business working with family.
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And we hit a point where Josh helped sell the family business. That was the goal. And so we
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did that. But we're now we're living up in Idaho and we have no income. And when you're where we are
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in Idaho, you've got to have an income. How many kids at this point? Three? No, we were at eight
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at that point. Oh wow. This was like 2016 or something. So we took a lot of years learning skills,
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learning how to homestead and learning how to cook, learning how to preserve and learning how to
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garden and you know, raise things whether it was animals or vegetables. But we hit this point
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where we were broke. We were just totally broke. And so it was kind of that moment where the
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rubber meets the road where we were like, okay, now we live it. Now if we don't grow it, we're not
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eating it because there's no money like we've got to save the money to pay the basic bills to keep
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some electricity on. And so we spent some time doing that and it just really, it took our
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homesteading to a whole another level of practical where it's not just, oh, I want to do this fun
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little homesteading project because it looks cute or it's going to taste good. It's like, now if we
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want to eat, we have to figure out how to do it and we have to figure out how to do it in the context
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of our life. So it means it has to be really practical. It has to work right now even though we're
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busy and we have other things we have to go do. So that just really helped, I think, develop a
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mindset of homesteading as a lifestyle that fits into a modern world. And not just is this little
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hobby thing I do on the weekends. It's like, no, how do we actually eat this way in a modern
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context where we all have busy lives? Josh was starting a business at the time and trying to
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figure out what the next thing was. So as we kind of really honed that in, we kind of had gotten
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a name now even up in Idaho for people who were living the lifestyle and people who had the answers
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when you had the questions, right? So there was this day that I remember that was really pivotal for
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me. It was elderberry season. I'd been out harvesting elderberries. And you know, for the most part,
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if you want to use elderberries that you foraged yourself, you have to figure out how to get all
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those little stems off of them to detach the berries from the stems. I had come up with a full
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method for this some years before that had to do with rolling them down a screen after freezing
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them. And it works really, really well. But on this particular day, I had three different friends
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call me and say, how do I do this? I can't figure out how to do this in a way that's it's all practical.
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And I ended up spending several hours on the phone that day explaining to friends how to do this.
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And I thought, I just, I can't take the time away from my family to just sit on the phone,
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no matter how much I want to help people. It's just too much time. So I grabbed my back then.
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It was like an iPhone 5 or something like that. I grabbed that and I'm like, I'm just going to try
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and film a video really fast to see if I could just have a video that I could send everybody else
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who's going to call me and ask the same question. And so I filmed the video and it was awful. I'm
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sure it was unusable. I'm sure I'd look back now and be like, it's not even focused. You can't
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even see what's going on. And I was so determined that I would not show my face in the video because
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I was terrified of the camera. I just, I did not want to be on camera at all. But something about it
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just really stuck with me. And I started thinking, I really want to help people. I really want to
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help moms who are trying to navigate this modern world and trying to find a better path for their
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family, both for being like healthy again. It's not just physically, but being healthy mentally,
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you know, having strong family relationships, having a good spiritual life that, you know,
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as a healthy spiritual life and having all of these pieces. And I really wanted to help moms
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who are trying to navigate that. But everything you see out there is giving you the other message,
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you know, the go buy more stuff message or that you have to look perfect message or your kids
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should be in every sport imaginable and should be attaining all of these, you know, goals,
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even as low as elementary school message. And it just was breaking people up and so I wanted to
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help them. But I had this problem of my own time. At some point I went to Josh and I said, I think
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I want to start a small business to be able to help moms and just to be able to put out some
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videos, maybe some classes to be able to help them learn what we've tried to learn, but to do it
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without all the mistakes and without all the pitfalls. And he was on board for that. We thought
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it was going to be a little side business that was like me at nap time while the kids are
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else leaving. I'd sit down for an hour and do this cute little project. And so that was right
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about I guess the end of 2016, right 2017. It started resonating not only with the people we were
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talking to so much, but it resonated with us. It was like authentically us who we were. We were
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homesteaders who really wanted to help people. And so it just became this thing that I think grew
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inside both Josh and I really quickly I turned to him and I'm like, this is getting bigger than I
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can handle. Can you help me? I need help with some of these pieces. And back then, you know, we're
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trying to figure out how to design websites and like we were also pretty much starting from scratch.
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Like we knew nothing. In fact, we tell this joke about deciding that, okay, we want to start our
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business on January 1st. We just need to figure out how to market it. And we were at December 20th.
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And we're like, we can figure out marketing in a few days. You know, and now we just laugh at
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each other. We were like, we knew nothing. We were totally clueless. You know, it was a really
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good process for us to learn how to work together on a whole different way on a joint project like
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that and to also be able to share it with other people. And as we let that go and start, you
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know, getting out into the world and started publishing things, it just quickly became really clear
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that there were a lot of people looking for answers. There were a lot of people who were looking
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for answers that weren't just coming from a source that was kind of saying, hey, I'm a brand new
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homesteader. Let me show you what I'm trying. Or I've kind of done this once or twice and it kind
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of works. They wanted answers from people who are like, yeah, we survived off of this. We know
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that it works. And we know this is the easiest way to do it when you have to get in, get it done
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and move on to the next thing. And so it just kind of blew up from there. That's so powerful.
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I'm curious, though, because I've historically worked with my wife at times.
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It's not always the easiest thing to work with your partner, let alone to have as many kids as you do.
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One of the things I think most of us struggle with is, well, how do I be a woman in a relationship
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with a man, you know, or a partner? It doesn't matter what gender, but it's like, how do you maintain
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your womanhood and your wifehood and your motherhood? And then, of course, now a very big part,
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your entrepreneurship, your business woman. I have to imagine it's gotten tough sometimes,
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particularly financial struggles, the moving. I mean, those are all very stressful times. How did
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you get out of those really tough times? For us, there were some very hard times, especially
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coming from a place where I had worked for Josh for his businesses and did his bookkeeping,
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but it was, you know, Josh's business. And to go into something like this with homesteading
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family, where I was really the driving force behind it. And I had a lot of the ideas and I had
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a lot of shaping the way I wanted it to go. And that definitely created some rubs for us.
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But it's kind of amazing when you work that closely with somebody and you work through those
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rubs, you actually become closer on the other side than you ever would have been. You know, if he
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just been going off and doing his thing and I'd been doing my thing, you know, we would have just
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kind of had our separate lives. But now we've gotten to know each other on a whole different level.
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For us, you know, communicating through all of it has been really key. When we got married,
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we had our commitment was the three seas. We had communication. We had commitment and we had
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Christ as Christians at the center of everything. And so for us being committed to all three of those
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things really helped. Like we knew there was no way out. There's no divorce. Like yeah, we may
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want to strangle each other in the middle of it, but there's no way out. So we better figure this
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out. We better work through it, which really meant a lot of communicating and really getting to
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moments past the frustration and sitting down and saying, OK, how are you feeling? How can we make
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this work? How can we make this good for everybody, including the kids and the household? You know,
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what we really found is that we were able to really identify each other's strengths and weaknesses
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in a way that we hadn't before and learn how to use those to complement each other instead of
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to fight each other. And that was the real key because you know, those opposing traits can really be
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a place you butt heads or if you kind of go, Hey, you know, this is something you're really good at.
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And while I have a strong opinion about it, I also know that it's really not my specialty.
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So I'm just going to defer. Let's go with your thing because you're really good in this area.
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Luckily for Josh and I, we have very opposing traits there, very complimentary. So, you know,
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he is great with numbers. He can do business math like nothing else. He can look at a profit in
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Laxie and he just like can see the health of a business. It is amazing. I look at numbers and I'm
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like, I don't know. It was something. There's a few numbers there. Like it almost means nothing to
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me at all. But on the teaching side and on the creative side and being able to communicate with people,
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that's more my specialty and that's a place where I'm, you know, really good at. So when we started
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working together instead of against each other, it just kind of changed the whole scenario.
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Now we have a lot of the kids joining us doing different parts of business for us.
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It's kind of the same thing, you know, communicating through that, finding the strengths and making
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sure we're encouraging each other and their strengths and deferring in our weaknesses.
28:46
And keeping the big picture of family and like you said, really faith in keeping that as the
28:51
bigger picture. You know, you mentioned something when you first were starting down this path that
28:57
you were like, oh, I thought I would just do it when the kids were sleeping or something like that.
29:02
But clearly it rarely works out that way, right? Particularly if you have that many kids,
29:06
there's not going to be everyone's not going to be sleeping at the same time. So that's something I
29:10
think a lot of entrepreneurs that have kids struggle with. How have you juggled those, those situations?
29:20
Is it delegation? Is it boundaries? Like how do you maintain your business while also
29:28
maintaining a home with so many kids? That's kind of an ongoing discussion because as the kids
29:34
change ages, the needs around the house are changing. At this point, we have a couple adult
29:39
children. We've got older teenagers in the house and we have little ones. The little list is about
29:45
19 months right now. And so, you know, we kind of have a steady stream of them all the way through.
29:53
Different age brackets with the kids look different and have looked different for me. Sometimes
29:59
it's looked like, you know, a day that Josh stays home with everybody and I go find a quiet spot
30:05
to just buckle down and focus and work and get through whatever I need to. Sometimes like this season,
30:12
I have an older daughter who was interested potentially in teaching and she came to me last year
30:19
and said, may I homeschool the kids this year? I would really like to try it. So we worked out a
30:25
schedule where she could have a couple days off so she could keep her school up also. But she took
30:30
over homeschooling which gave me some time to spend some of those hours getting stuff, business stuff
30:37
done and then being able to spend the afternoons just being mom and in the house. And so, you know,
30:43
it looks different in every season. But one thing we've definitely done is we've definitely taken
30:48
on a lot more help on the business side to free Josh and I up so that we're not so tied to
30:55
just business stuff all the time. No more of the days of Josh and I trying to figure out HTML
31:00
coding or anything like that. Like, no, we hire somebody to do that and we focus on what we are
31:05
really good at and then find people who are really good and really passionate about families and
31:11
home-steading to help us with the rest. I imagine you probably have people attracted to what you're
31:19
doing and they sometimes come to you, right? Yeah, that's powerful. We actually have had a lot of
31:23
really amazing people who have been in the corporate world and see what we're doing. They're like,
31:29
I want to work in a way that is authentic to my values. I want to actually help people and not
31:36
just make money. And so they've come to us through that. I've known you both now for a little bit of
31:41
time and you both just seem like such the model of authenticity. And so hearing your story of how
31:47
you got here is so authentic and it's so practical and honest. It doesn't surprise me that you're
31:54
continually attracting people that are seeking that kind of authenticity, that transparency.
32:01
Now, you've been doing this though long enough where I could see you getting burnout or maybe
32:07
someone else who's doing home-steaded getting burnout. So has that come up and if so, how are you
32:12
navigating that? Because most, that is what most human struggle with, right, is consistency.
32:18
Yeah, that is burnout, especially in the home-steading world, is a very real thing. It can be very
32:23
real for entrepreneurs too. And for us, it comes down to making sure we get as much help as we can
32:32
when we can get it, but also to keep our priorities straight, keep the family in the first place,
32:38
keep Josh and my relationship really high up in the first place, faith, very high. But it's also
32:44
taking care of ourselves and taking moments for rest, taking moments for a break, we never work on
32:50
Sunday. It is not as a religious thing for us, particularly, but we just feel like, hey,
32:57
God designed a day of rest in. Let's take it. It's probably a good idea. So we don't get on our
33:02
computers. We don't do anything like that. We just hang out with family, go to church, visit
33:08
with friends, and take a rest day. Another thing that we're doing is this coming year, we're taking
33:14
a year, it'll be our seventh year on this piece of property, our kind of hopefully final home
33:20
stead. And we're actually taking a year where we're still home-steading. We're still going to do
33:25
all of our normal stuff, but we're not going to do any big projects this year. So we're going to
33:31
take a much lighter year. As home-steaders, it's our tendency to get on a piece of land and just like,
33:36
we have to shape it, we have to get everything right, we just infrastructure project after project,
33:41
after, you know, oh, we need to update the water systems or the fencing or the pasture, whatever it
33:48
is. And we've been doing that. We've been going hard for about six years straight on this. And
33:53
this next year, we just said, no, this is a break for us. Again, we'll still be gardening. We'll
33:58
still be raising all of our animals. We'll still be making YouTube videos and doing all of our
34:04
regular stuff, but we're not doing any extras this year, which is going to feel like a huge
34:09
reduction in pace for us because we've been doing so many projects every year.
34:15
What are some of the things you and Josh are doing to put your relationship for us? Are you,
34:20
do you have date nights once a week? I mean, you do. So how does that look?
34:24
Every Thursday night, we have a date night. So we get out of the house now. The kids are old
34:29
enough. We have, you know, built-in babysitters now. So they have their fun rituals they do
34:35
here. So everybody looks forward to us leaving the house for the night, you know, for the evening.
34:40
So we'll go out and we'll have a date night once a month. We do an overnight date night,
34:46
where we take a slow morning, the next morning, we get everything off the schedule for the next
34:51
morning. And so we can go to breakfast and we can go do a little window shopping or skiing or
34:57
whatever it is we're doing. And the fun thing with that one is we take turns planning those.
35:03
So we kind of do all sorts of really interesting fun things that like just one of us feels like
35:08
would be really fun. Do you get a little competitive where you're trying to top each other?
35:13
We have, you know, for the budget sake, you have to like set a budget and say, okay, we're not
35:19
topping this because you can start making some pretty grand schemes there. But yeah, we have a
35:24
lot of fun with that. And then Josh and I try to get away for a couple of days several times a year
35:30
where we'll go and get on a plane and go usually somewhere warm and sunny in the middle of winter
35:36
and go get some vitamin D and get some time to hang out with just the two of us. And away from
35:41
business, away from that, the homestead, just get some downtime. It's beautiful. I love though to
35:48
the journey of we don't know how we're going to pair bills to now getting to really enjoy the
35:54
reefs of all the work you've done. So that's that's a beautiful journey. Congrats on that. So
36:00
you kind of touched on it. But what does a day look like for you home study? Because you mentioned
36:05
we're going to still do our basics going into this year. We're not going to take on big projects. But
36:09
what are the basics you do on a normal basis? I know you mentioned taking care of the animals, but
36:16
maybe walk us through what it looks like inside the home for home studying. Like what are you doing
36:20
with your food on a weekly or daily basis? Well, you can imagine that a household with
36:26
10 kids at home right now. We have one who is married and just this week we're starting to
36:34
watch our texts for a baby alert coming in. So our first grand baby on the way. But we often have
36:42
multiple interns in the house. So right now there's about 14 to 15 people at pretty much every
36:48
meal with us with all the interns and the kids who are at home. So that creates a really dynamic
36:55
household. There's a lot going on in a house even on just a maintenance day. For us the day kind of
37:02
starts for Josh and I it's usually pretty early. We like to get up early enough to have some quiet
37:07
time prayer, Bible time, little bit of stretching or exercise and then time to get ready for the day,
37:15
you know, just your basics getting dressed. And then we head on at about 630 everybody meets up
37:20
for doing chores. And everybody knows what their chore is. They have the same chore for about
37:27
six months at a time. So it's kind of the first thing the kids do rolling out of bed. They
37:31
they have their quiet time. They make their bed. They get dressed to all their little self-care.
37:36
And then they're expected to be at chores at about 630. Some people are out in the barn. Some of them
37:42
are milking the cow. Some of them are in the house getting breakfast going. Some of us are,
37:47
you know, cleaning the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher, just doing all kind of our regular stuff.
37:53
So we do that. That usually takes about an hour in the morning of chore time. And then we have about
37:58
half an hour of like get your room cleaned up, a little bit of personal time. This is a moment
38:04
where Josh and I sit down for a cup of coffee together and we kind of look at the schedule for
38:08
the day and for the week. You know, what's going on? What do we need to do? Oh, we've got to plant
38:12
that garlic, you know, like we're getting a little ate or, you know, next weekend I really think
38:17
we need to butcher sheep or whatever it is that we're doing. So it's kind of our planning moment
38:22
in the morning. And then we all sit down to breakfast together. Usually we're at breakfast right
38:27
about eight o'clock. And we'll take about half an hour together for a hot breakfast. We also do
38:33
family Bible time at that point and little devotions there and kind of just catch up. It sets the
38:38
tone for the day. Then by about eight thirty we're all getting to our own jobs. We have another set
38:45
of chores right here that we call daily chores and they rotate every day for every person.
38:50
So nobody gets stuck with breakfast clean up every day of the week or dishes that gets rotated
38:56
around. But this is kind of a period of the day where we do a lot of our basics that we need to take
39:03
care of the household. So that would be, you know, somebody's making bread or somebody is making
39:10
breakfast cast rolls. I am notoriously not a morning person or a breakfast person. So I learned
39:16
a long time ago if all these hungry people that I have at the table are going to eat their breakfast,
39:22
a hot breakfast in the morning that I have to make it ahead of time. So we do a lot of breakfast
39:27
cast rolls. And are those frozen ahead of time or how far in advance? No, we just make them.
39:33
Usually it's Monday morning and Tuesday morning they're making enough to get through the entire
39:39
week Monday through Friday. And then Saturday, Sunday we usually will do a hot breakfast or,
39:44
you know, for running up the door to church we'll do like muffins or something really easy.
39:49
So we kind of take care of those items right there, whether it's cleaning items around the house,
39:54
keeping the laundry going, folding laundry, different things like that. And then we get to by about
40:00
nine o'clock we get to what we call the work of the day, work of the day. That's whatever we need to
40:06
do that day. The policy around our house is we homeschool any day we're not doing something else.
40:14
So we homeschool through the summer, we homeschool in the winter, we homeschool all the time,
40:18
but we also take whatever time we need to homestead when there's a project that needs to get done.
40:24
So it's seasonal then what's going on, obviously. It's seasonal, but it's also reactive
40:31
beyond just seasonal. So right now we're end of October, it's raining out, it's a great home
40:39
school day. So everybody's doing their homeschool. Tomorrow however, we're expecting some sunshine
40:45
and we have a local expert coming up to take us chantrell mushroom hunting.
40:52
So we have something else to do. We're not going to worry about school that day. We're going to go
40:56
learn how to hunt mushrooms. You know, it's just about butchering season here. So Friday,
41:01
we probably won't do school. We'll probably be out butchering pigs. But any day in between,
41:08
again, this is true in the middle of summer, any day in between where we're not doing something,
41:13
you know, big project on the homestead or something like that. We're homeschooling.
41:18
Right now I feel like you're specifically focusing on specific category of homesteading.
41:25
Is that based on seasonal and in your household, are you kind of only doing that
41:30
what a few days to a week, a year or how do those kind of practices that you promote to your
41:38
followers and beyond? How do those play out in your household?
41:41
Luckily, homesteading is very seasonal, right? So you move in and out of things. Luckily,
41:45
it's not everything all at once. It feels that way some days. But in general, it's really
41:51
nicely patterned between a planting season, a growing season, a harvest season. And then for us
41:57
in Idaho, we have a very strong winter season, which is kind of a down season or maintenance mode
42:03
season. So for us, that becomes homeschool season where we really double down, buckle down,
42:08
and do a lot of homeschooling. But within the week, we have different things going on.
42:16
We have things like preservation happening and it kind of happens throughout the season.
42:23
So again, if we have a big day, let's say we have a whole bunch of tomatoes coming in and we need
42:28
to take a canning day, then that's the work of the day is to can the tomatoes. And it's not a
42:33
homeschooling day. So, you know, for me, that kind of skirts in and out of doing business work
42:40
and having time to sit and chat with you or to answer emails or to create new classes or
42:46
write books. But in general, we kind of just buckle down and do what the work of the day is,
42:52
whatever it is. So if it's again canning tomatoes, actually, I say canning tomatoes, but I don't
42:57
can tomatoes anymore. Now I exclusively freeze dried tomatoes because canning tomatoes is a lot
43:04
of work. I do a lot of other canning, but we also do freeze drying and fermenting and dehydration
43:09
and a lot of other things. But you know, if tomatoes are what we're putting up for the day,
43:13
we just kind of go to the kitchen and get it done. I also have the help of some of our interns
43:19
who are here. And so sometimes through the season, I'll get them started on a project and then
43:24
let them try their wings out and doing something by themselves. So, you know, there's a lot of
43:29
hands, which makes it doable. I think you just alluded to this, but in a certain regard,
43:35
when we can, for example, there's kind of one main method to can, right? I mean, there's
43:42
multiple ways you could try, but there's kind of one that's tried and true, like this is how you do
43:46
it, right? But then for someone who's been doing it as long as you, what changes for you? So,
43:54
because let's say you create a video and you show people how to can that one way, well,
43:58
clearly, though, after doing it for 15 years, you probably adjust things, right? You sort of learn,
44:04
well, actually, I think we can do this better or we can do this even more efficient. And so,
44:09
how does that change for you? And what is your criteria for change?
44:13
Honestly, what changes the most when you do something year after year is the mental space that
44:18
that job requires for you. You know, at the beginning, when you start doing something like canning,
44:24
your whole focus has to be on canning to make sure you're doing it correctly.
44:29
At some point, all of a sudden, you're just checking a number two and going, okay, I have to
44:35
process this for 25 minutes and you're kind of on autopilot because you've been doing it for so long,
44:40
you don't have to put all of your attention to it. So, you know, maybe I'm answering some
44:45
math questions while I'm canning or I'm giving directions for somebody to go do another project
44:52
or maybe I'm filming while I'm canning it and showing other people how to do it. But for a lot of
44:57
things, I find that the biggest change is just that mental space because when you're learning a new
45:04
skill, it takes so much mental space, it takes so much effort in just the learning and the putting
45:11
that into practice. But you start doing that five, six, seven times and all of a sudden,
45:17
it becomes about like muscle memory. It doesn't take the amount of sheer effort and planning
45:25
to get it done. So, while it used to take me, you know, a couple of days to like gear up and get
45:31
the recipe and get all this supplies and get all these things ready and then to just buckle down
45:37
and do the canning. I now laugh, you know, a couple of canner loads used to seem so stressful
45:43
because it was also new. Now, it's like, oh, I think I can get a canner load in before dinner.
45:48
You know, I'll just do that real fast and just throw it together and get it going and it bubbles
45:52
away and does its thing during dinner and then after dinner, it's out on the counter.
45:56
So, it starts just kind of fitting into life. With that said, there are things that I have found
46:01
that make things so much more efficient. So, there are places where the skill itself changes
46:08
and I think that's a place where you're just always asking yourself, you know, have I gotten
46:13
new information that lets me know a better way to do this. One that I can think of is going back
46:19
to that elderberry discussion. I talked about that very first video of trying to get those
46:23
elderberries off the stands. Well, I've now learned to use a steam juicer for anything like that.
46:30
I don't even mess with the stems anymore. I just kind of get most of the berries off
46:35
and I use a steam juicer and it takes almost no work on my side and I end up with this perfect
46:41
elderberry juice that's been steamed juiced and I don't have to mess with all the little fussy bits.
46:47
So, it cuts out a lot of time. I don't know a steam juicer. I'm going to have to look that up.
46:51
For anything like currents, any sort of little fussy thing that you want to get the juice out of,
46:58
that is the way to go so that you're not dealing with seeds, you're not dealing with little stems,
47:03
anything like that. I also use it for apples because what I found is I can juice apples just slightly
47:11
and then I can run them through the food mill and I can get apple cider and apple sauce out of the
47:18
exact same apples and like double my return on one product. So, that's been a great method for me.
47:27
Another place where I've really changed methodology is using the freeze dryer. This is something I've
47:31
spent a lot of time talking about freeze drying this last year because I just published a freeze
47:36
drying book and we created a full class on how to use a freeze dryer or video digital class.
47:43
It's just something that I feel pretty passionate about in this like the heart of being practical
47:51
and on getting things done in a practical way. And while I'm really glad for all my other
47:56
preservation methods and I plan on using them forever, I don't plan on giving up canning or
48:02
fermenting definitely or dehydrating. While we have the electricity available to us that we have,
48:11
a freeze dryer is a great way to go because it saves so much time in processing.
48:16
In one sense, home studying is very ancestral, right? It's basically utilizing the ways of our past
48:23
and maintaining those ways. But you seem very open to modern techniques that enable you to do
48:29
some of those older techniques, which is really exactly what this podcast is about is taking the
48:34
best from the past, but bringing it into our modern lives. Do you have a line though where you're
48:40
like, if there is a modern technique, what line do you draw on the sand and say, nope, I will not do
48:46
this because of this. What's your line? Well, my first line is in developing skills that don't need
48:54
modern inputs. So for me, it's really important to know how to ferment my food. I don't need much
49:00
besides salt to be able to do that. But if you think about it, even canning is a modern method.
49:06
You know, that is a very industrial method that we could not do without factories.
49:12
We just have to be careful about what we see as an ancestral and what we see as a modern method
49:18
because a lot of us lump that canning right in there with that and it just isn't. It's a very
49:23
modern method that totally sterilizes your food. And so for me, I do like constantly a cost
49:31
benefit analysis here. You know, what is the nutritional downfall of what I'm doing? We know with
49:38
fermenting, it can actually increase the nutrition in your food in some ways, right? At least in the
49:45
short term, medium term dehydrating that actually really decreases a lot of the nutrients in your
49:53
food when you're talking about micronutrients, not the macros. And so looking at the amount of time
49:59
you're spending on doing something, the amount of energy you have to put into it, what are the
50:04
actual costs of it? You know, a fermenting is almost free. A freeze dryer is really expensive,
50:10
a pressure canner and a dehydrator somewhere in between. So kind of looking at all of this.
50:16
But the other thing I like to think about is my intent behind homesteading and behind doing the
50:23
things that I'm doing. I am not canning so that I can spend my days canning. That's not actually
50:30
what I want to do with my days. I am canning so I can have really great food security for my family
50:38
and make sure that we have really high quality food even in the middle of winter.
50:43
So when I look at that and I go, okay, what are my resources available to do that?
50:49
In some times of life, like when we first moved to Idaho, we're broke and we're like, yeah,
50:54
well, I can dehydrate or I can use the jars that neighbors give me and I can water bath can
51:00
or I can ferment. And that's about all that's accessible to me right now. But there are points
51:06
in our life where we go, hey, I have the resources to get a freeze dryer or a pressure canner.
51:12
How do I use that to my benefit to reach my goals in a way that lets me actually reach my larger
51:19
goals, which is relationships, healthy families, investing in people by not spending so much time
51:28
in the kitchen, but still being able to get to the same place. I am actually being able to reach
51:34
those goals in a better way. So you know, it's kind of doing that constant analysis. It's a constant
51:41
feedback loop. What works? What do I like? What will my family eat versus not eating? You know,
51:48
fermenting may be inexpensive and fairly easy to do, but not everybody wants to eat a whole lot
51:55
of fermented food. A lot of people's families are like, I'm not going to eat that. I don't like
51:58
that flavor. You know, so just being really realistic with where you're at and what your resources are.
52:04
And your goals are. Did you have a lot of learning curve with some of these things? I know sometimes
52:09
when people go down the path, if let's just say fermentation, they have a lot of bad batches or
52:14
batches that go bad. Did you experience that as well? I like to say that my job is to make every
52:19
mistake out there so that I can tell people how not to do it. Because yes, I have a tendency to
52:26
just do it, however, I feel like doing it and experiencing a lot of the negative effects of
52:35
doing that. So yes, I have had many batches of fermented food go bad. Lots of things go wrong
52:42
with dehydrating. Canning is probably the place because you've got to be so dialed into canning
52:47
safety. I had a few near misses. And then I like started really learning about canning safety.
52:54
And then I was like, okay, now we have this this dialed in. But even freeze-drying,
53:01
when I started freeze-drying, one of the early things I did was eggs. And I freeze-dried hundreds
53:06
and hundreds and hundreds of eggs. I think I lost about a third of them, which was so sad,
53:14
but I just I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know the proper ways to tell that your
53:19
freeze-dried food was actually done and done in the freeze-dryer or had a store them properly to
53:26
maintain them. And so when I went to use them, I had lost so many of them. But I learned and I learned
53:32
all the tips and tricks. So yes, we've made every mistake. And you put those in your your freeze-drying
53:38
course. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, save everybody else the trouble. You know, when you've done something
53:43
for 20 years, like home-steading, it's like you're going to make mistakes. You have to be okay with
53:48
making mistakes. So last question. Is there anything in home-steading that you've come across?
53:55
You're like, no way. I don't want to do it. Like, is there is there anything you've come across
54:00
in your time? You're just like, not going to do it. Done. Not don't even want to try. You know,
54:06
have you faced anything like that? Yeah, like DIY toilet paper probably goes high on my list
54:13
of things that it's like, you know, it's good to know how to do this in case, you know,
54:18
COVID happens again and you can't get toilet paper, right? But I've got room to stock up a couple
54:23
extra rolls down in my basement. So I'm doing okay with that. I'm happy to not deal with that with
54:30
the family size that I have definitely. That's probably the biggest one for me that I can think
54:37
of. I'm pretty adventurous when it comes to eating and like getting into different things. But
54:43
yeah, the toilet paper for me, that's one I don't need to touch. And I guess the question I should
54:48
probably ask, even though I said that was the last one, that everyone's probably going to wonder,
54:52
is are you planning more kids or are you done? I don't know. We'll see. I mean, now we're at a point
54:59
that we've got grandkids on the way. So, you know, it would be fine with me if the next generation
55:05
just took over and kept the legacy going. My son married a young lady who is also from a large
55:12
family. And they told me the other day that anything less than six just seems way too small.
55:19
So I had to laugh. I think we'll keep the legacy going on at least through them.
55:23
Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much for your time. I know you're a very busy person,
55:28
so I appreciate you taking the time. You mentioned your freeze-drying course, but please share some
55:34
of the courses people can access right now from you, where to find them and the best way to follow
55:39
you. Yeah, start over at homesteadingfamily.com. That's a great way to find us. We've got a really
55:47
extensive blog over there with lots of how-to articles, a lot of videos over on YouTube,
55:53
we're on Instagram and Facebook, social media is only not really our thing that much.
55:58
We have a lot of classes on getting into homesteading from bread making to canning to fermenting,
56:05
even homemade dairy, herbalism, basic herbal medicine. And then the latest class on freeze-drying
56:12
is just out along with the brand new book. Freeze-drying the harvest is now out. It's available right now
56:20
through homesteadliving.com. And I think it's supposed to be headed out to other big book suppliers
56:26
any day now. So keep an eye out for that. Along with our classes, we also have a monthly magazine
56:33
that we create that has all sorts of different how-to ideas for the homestead, but it's really
56:40
centered around the kitchen and around making the most out of your seasonal harvest or from the
56:47
farmer's market and then getting that preserved in all different methods. So that would be another
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thing you can check out at homesteadingfamily.com. And then magazines, I just want to share, I've seen
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them, I have them and they are the type of magazine like that's kind of I call it magazine plus where
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it's just like it's not one you're going to toss. Like this is going on your shelf because there's
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so much good content, there's so many good recipes. It's such the such beautiful photography that
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you're like I'm going to reutilize this again. Thank you to you and Josh and your family for doing
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what you're doing. I just stress again, it's it's beautiful when we find people that are successful
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that truly came from their heart from a place of necessity and true passion for what they're doing.
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So thank you for that and may you continue shining your bright light to all the people that need
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your message. Look forward to more from the homesteading family. So thank you again.
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Oh thank you James. Thank you for going with us on the everyday ancestral journey today with
57:57
Carolyn. Make sure to follow us to like us to share about this podcast with those that are
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curious because we're here to feed curious minds so stay curious yourself and thank you for participating.
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Thank you so much for joining me on everyday ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode hit
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subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You could find the show notes links and resources
58:25
mentioned at eatpluck.com that's EATPLUCK.com and hey if you know someone who'd get something out of
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this share it with them too. Stay curious, live well and keep it ancestral.