Cancer Was Next – Melissa K. Norris on How Modern Food Nearly Broke Her and Homesteading Brought Her Back

I love learning about people's journeys. I can't think of a more important journey than one that involves our health. And that's why I'm so excited to share my next guest, Melissa Kay Norris. She's known for her homesteading expertise, yet I found it very fascinating learning about how she came to homesteading. Melissa Kay Norris has helped hundreds of thousands of people each month raise their own food and create a homemade and homegrown kitchen, home garden, and barnyard through her website, her popular Pioneering Today podcast, the Pioneering Today Academy, and her books. She is a co-founder of the Modern Homesteading Conference, as well as owner of Norris Farmstead. I am so excited for you to learn not only homesteading, But also the first steps any of us can take in getting control of the food that we allow into our bodies. Please enjoy Melissa K. Norris. What are your top 3 things from the past that you're like, we got to bring these into the present?

One is definitely the way that we cook. And so getting back to a little bit more of Slow. And by meaning that, like doing fermented foods, right? Fermented foods take time. They're not something that you, you know, open a package and it's just there. Getting back to sourdough, you know, cultured and fermented foods, they, they take time. But for some reason we have this equation in our mind that if something takes time, that it's really hard. Like we think, oh gosh, that's going to be time-consuming. Like that's a bad thing. And it's not, and sometimes things do take time, but it's not a lot of hands-on time. And that's really the case with like sourdough, fermented vegetables. It truly is actually very little amount of hands-on time. It's kind of doing its thing without you. You're just guiding it in a few places and giving it the right conditions, but you're really not, it's not like this hands-on, super involved process. Like you can work it into a super busy lifestyle. Without it being this over-consuming thing or where you have to, you know, be there all day long. But for some reason in our brains, I don't know if it's the marketing that we've been fed through, you know, TV and marketing campaigns for the past 50 years, like do a TV dinner. Taking the time and kind of that slow food mentality honestly has been less work overall for me of like hands-on, you know, working, but you get all of these awesome, amazing benefits. So it's kind of the best of both worlds. But I would say that like homesteaders and ancestral talking and kind of all of those things, actually, I would say in the past, probably 6 to 8 years, we've seen an upwards trend. So I feel like more people right now than say 10 years ago actually know about fermented foods or are talking about fermented foods and gut health. Like they've really started to kind of rise to the forefront. But, you know, like 10 years ago, there was a lot of folks, myself included. I didn't grow up in a home. We homesteaded, but my mom didn't ferment. That wasn't something that they did. And so I had never had truly fermented food. Like I'd never had kimchi. I'd never had like old-fashioned actual like salt brined pickles. My mom did vinegar pickles. I didn't really know anything about cultured food other than yogurt, you know, but like, I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know how to make it. I didn't even know the flavor profiles of them because it just wasn't something I had been introduced to. So thankfully, I think a lot more people are finding out about them and talking about them now, which is really exciting. But there's still a lot of folks that it, it's not what would be considered a part of their normalcy.

That's such a good point that there's degrees of homesteading, right? It's like, sometimes I think we think of homesteading as just a blanket term of like, well, it's just DIY, you know, just do everything, you know, on your own, make your own house, yada, yada. But there's really degrees. And maybe that's how you distinguish modern homesteading. Can you kind of dive into that of like, what makes, you know, the homesteading that you practice, you promote different from someone else who's promoting homesteading?

I actually love this question because it's so funny. When you say the word homesteading, you get very different reactions from people. And so you have a lot of people that are like, There is no Homesteading Act anymore. Nobody is homesteading. You know, like they have this very black and white, like line in the sand. And I'm like, technically correct. There is not a Homesteading Act as we know of historically, you know, that, that has ended even in Alaska, nowhere in the U.S. right now is there any homesteading acts, but the principles of homesteading absolutely remain. So for me, the principle of homesteading is becoming more of a producer than a consumer. And I didn't actually coin that term. I've heard it. mentioned or phrased in different ways for a number of years. So I don't know who to actually give credit to. But the principle is there's those varying degrees. So start where you're at right now and apply that. So of course, for some it would be like, yes, I want to produce absolutely every single thing that we consume, our home, our electricity by being off-grid. You know, like you can really take it to the 9th degree. But for most folks, it's going to be starting slow. And I always like start in the kitchen, even if you're in an apartment, everybody has a kitchen and everybody needs to eat some form of a kitchen. And so if you can start there with your food and maybe you can't grow any of your own food yet, anybody can almost do a little bit of herbs in a windowsill, a sunny windowsill. So there's some degree there, but you're not going to be raising your own beef cattle yet, or maybe even able to do, you know, chickens yet. If you live obviously in an apartment, that's going to be very difficult though. I'm sure someone out there has figured it out and is doing it. But my point being is look at what am I buying? Is it all pre-made? You know, or what do we eat on a really consistent basis that I'm buying from the store that's already been done for me? So bread, for example, you know, are you buying bread from the store? Well, instead of buying the bread, can you take the basic ingredients, flour, salt, water, yeast, if you're not doing sourdough and make your own bread and do that until it becomes a part of your really normal routine, like without even thinking you've got it worked into your schedule, you know how to make it. It turns out great. And once that becomes that habit that you don't really even think about it anymore, go ahead and add the next thing in. So you're slowly producing more of what you're consuming instead of only bringing in things that are already done for you. And you can apply it to all different things. Maybe it's, you know, learn how to make your own soap or a simple all-purpose cleaner. There's all different aspects that we can take it. Your skincare. The kitchen is where I like to start because it's so foundational. And anybody can do some of the kitchen stuff, like no matter where you're at in life, and it can be applied immediately.

I love that because it's a simple start, but it also, it puts emphasis on you're in control of the ingredients. And I imagine it also lowers your costs. Have you ever done the analysis of like how much someone can save by just making their own bread, for example, or some of their own food opposed to buying it already pre-made?

It's phenomenal actually, because if you're buying, you know, say even you're starting small and you're buying like 10-pound bag of flour. I buy flour by the 50-pound bag. So I'm trying to think back. It's been so long. Like, what is the smallest bag of flour you can buy? 5 or 10 pounds. I'm pretty sure you can get at the grocery store.

That is funny. You can like measure your kind of like advancement with something by how, how big of a bag you buy. Right.

Right. But you think about like, cause I often will see people who are like, well, oh my gosh, like to cook from scratch, like it's so expensive. But if you're dividing it out by weight, it's not. I have never, in my personal experience, I have never had it be more expensive to make it from scratch if I'm actually doing the calculation of ingredients by weight. Because what happens is, you know, people look at a bag of potato chips or something, right? That's actually very little weight. They're doing it by price per package. Or even like soda pop, like we'll have people say, oh my gosh, raw milk is so expensive. Yet they buy pop, but they're spending how many, you know, maybe $2. I don't actually know how much like a 20-ounce thing of soda costs because I don't drink it. You're paying for, I think they're like 20 ounces now. I don't think they're 16 ounces anymore for like the plastic individual bottles. And they're like, oh my gosh, but this gallon of raw milk is so much money. Well, if you were actually to do that volume comparison per dollar, it's really not. And then the health aspect of it. Let alone the dollar amount, right? Just greatly increases it because there is— it might not be immediate, but I think for a lot of people, especially now, are beginning to realize the cost of that cheap food, right? That processed food, the cost it has to your health may not be immediate, but you will pay it down the road one way or another. So when you put those 2 together, it has always been cheaper. And even upfront financially, it's always been cheaper. I have found to make it from scratch.

Yeah. It's such a hard thing for people to understand. I mean, I grapple with that a lot because some people will say like, oh, well, Pluck seems so expensive. And I'm like, well, eat the organ meats. Just, they will be cheaper because it's the freeze drying process that increases the price so much. So I'm like, go ahead, eat the organs, go do it. But clearly if they're coming to us, they're probably not doing that. But I'd rather have you get it in than not get it in. So you have to figure out what works for your lifestyle, but I find it really interesting because people will think it's so expensive, but I'm like, but you know, there was one point where you weren't paying $70 to $100 for a cell phone. And where did that money come from? And why is that so important? Why is spending literally, I think it works out to be like 25 cents a serving. Why is that expensive? But yet you're willing to pay some streaming service, you know, $19.99 or $9.99 a month and pay for 5 of them. So this idea of like what value we put on things is really skewed. And I think people don't see the correlation of like, if you buy things that are not nutrient-dense now, or you buy things that are really ultra-processed now, you will pay it later. There's no situation where you don't pay it.

100%. And I think too, though, James, like, I don't think that people oftentimes— I think the problem is people don't attribute the health issues. And I'm talking in general senses, right? There's a lot of people that have realized that, and I'm one of them, but overall in our general Western society, I don't know that people actually have the correlation that the health issues that they're suffering and that they're dealing with, one, that it's not normal. And 2, that it is attributed to their food. I don't know that a lot of people have actually made that correlation. And I think oftentimes people don't even realize you shouldn't be feeling that way. That's not normal, but because it's been their normal for so long, they don't realize you shouldn't always be inflamed. You shouldn't always be exhausted. But a lot of these things are a result of, yes, our food industry. Some of it is lifestyle. Like, you know, there is a combination there, but if that's all you've ever known, they don't even know the difference. And again, if you go to, you know, a doctor and, you know, I have high blood pressure, like they'll probably change you like, oh, you know, you should try to change your diet. But there's so many things that people deal with and diet's never discussed because doctors don't take nutrition in medical school. I think they have like maybe even, I don't even know if they have a full 2 days. They do not go through nutritional training at all. And so they can't teach what they don't know. So, and there's some great doctors out there. So this is not bashing our medical system overall, but there is a lot wrong with it. And people just don't realize the impact that the food that they eat has on their health and wellbeing.

Well, a lot of people just know you as a homesteader, but they don't realize that you actually have your own history within the kind of medical or pharmaceutical industry, you kind of went through your own health journey that really, it sounds like it carried you to homesteading. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, it brought me back to homesteading in it like times 100. So I was a pharmacy tech for a little over 18 years. During that time, we still, interestingly enough, like we were still raising our own beef. We still had a garden and I was canning, but I was also cooking, you know, we were mixing that with like a lot of processed things from the store because I was working, was commuting 36 miles every day and working at the pharmacy. And we'd get home about 7 o'clock at night with the shift that I had. And so we would have like our own grass-fed, grass-finished ground beef, but I would mix it, you know, with these sides of, you know, jars and packets and things from the store. A corn muffin mix, you know, not understanding anything about good healthy fats. And so You know, vegetable oil and canola oil, Crisco, you know, all that. They, they make me cringe now. So I guess thankfully I did still have the good grass-fed, grass-finished beef. Amen. But you know, all the other things on the side. I experienced after I had my daughter, my second child, really bad GERD and stomach ulcers. And so I was on prescription medications up to 6 times a day and different ones. Some were proton pump inhibitors, which shut off the pumps that pump the acid Into your stomach if those are on overdrive, which is a very common thought as to why people suffer from GERD. The ulcers and that I was developing because of the acid and wasn't being stopped by being on those other prescriptions I was taking, basically it's a chemical bandaid that would coat your stomach lining so that you could eat without the pain from the ulcers. None of it was working. And so they sent me in to have an endoscope cuz they were like, we, you know, we kind of need to get in there and see what's going on. You know, none of these None of our traditional treatments are, are working. And I was really young and had gotten down really, really thin. I was like, like size 4 pants were falling off of me just because eating was so painful. So anyways, so I went in and had the endoscope done. And when I woke up, they said, we found 2 spots that we ended up doing a biopsy on, which had never entered my mind at 29 that there could be a possibility of cancer at all. And so that was like, oh my gosh. And we, Got the results back. Thankfully it was benign, so I didn't have cancer, but both on my upper stomach and my esophagus, I had erosion and I had cellular change, which would be like the precursor to precancerous cells, basically. So the specialist said, you have got to figure out a way to one, come off of the medications you're on. Your general practitioner should have never put you on the doses that you have been on for the time period you've been allowed to be on them. So you've got to come off of them. And you have to figure out a way to control this by the food that you're eating. This has to be controlled by diet. If not, the next time you come back to see me and we do this, your biopsy results will be very different.

Sounds like a rare doctor to recommend diet.

Extremely rare. Extremely rare. In fact, the funniest part— well, not funny. I definitely believe that God directed me to the specialist. He was only in our county. One day a month, I happened to get this specialist on the one day a month that he was in our area. It was very incredible, especially now as I look back, like how blessed, how blessed I was to have this, this practitioner. So we live really far out. I'm like an hour away from almost anything. And so I remember driving home. I still remember it to this day. I was driving home and I had this stack of papers on the passenger seat beside me that he had given me to, you know, going over food and common foods that trigger acid, you know, all these different things. And I remember when I was driving home, I'm like, this was a very distinct moment in time, like where I had a choice right there to, to figure it out, you know, to dive into it, to fully commit, you know, dig in, or I could continue just going on the path and I could ignore that. And I probably wouldn't be here now because this was, you know, 15 years ago. I wouldn't maybe be here when my kids graduated high school or got married, I feel like that it has been life-saving for me. So I'm very passionate about it if you can't tell. So I did, I set out and really at that point in time, cause we're going back quite a, quite a few ways, nutrition and food wasn't talked about the way it is today. Thankfully, like there's a lot more conversation, a lot more information available out there for people. And so I just used Google and the internet and it was dial-up at the time. I had dial-up internet and I just started researching everything about our food and the ingredients and the way it was grown and the way that it was processed and GMOs and high fructose corn syrup. I mean, food dye. Like I just dove down the rabbit hole of information and, and everything that I started discovering and reading, I just was like, I'm cutting everything out that is a genetically modified ingredient. Anything that has food dye in it, you know, we're cutting out. And if it's an ingredient that I can't pronounce and, or I don't know what it is, without having to look it up and really research it, then it's not coming into our house and I'm not consuming it. So I had to throw out a good portion of my pantry. And I was shocked because I started reading ingredient labels. I didn't read ingredient labels really before then. I mean, I was so surprised to see what food dye is in things and what, how much soy is in like everything, how much at that point, like high fructose corn syrup, like is in everything. At that point. And so I threw it all out and then just brought back in ingredients I felt good about. So I'd always used butter. I'd never been a margarine girl, but instead of Crisco, I brought in coconut oil. No vegetable oil, canola oil was allowed. So we started using avocado oil and real olive oil, just things like that. And it was amazing because I had been suffering with that GERD and on those prescription medications. At that point for a few years, within 6 months of taking all of that stuff out, I was able to get off every single one of the medications, not have the stomach acid, the ulcers could heal, and I've never had to go back on them. That was just 6 months of changing food.

People need to take this in. As you started this out talking about how we had this idea that If it takes a long time that it's hard, right? We also have this idea that getting healthy is hard. It's only hard because we struggle to make the decision to do it. Once you decide to do it, it's not as hard as you think.

Yeah. Especially when you see the benefits and the change in the way you feel really quickly, actually. Like if you're, if you're actually paying attention, I think that's it. I don't think we pay attention a lot to our own bodies. I think we kind of have a disconnect sometimes on the way we feel. So if you start paying attention to, okay, I just ate something. How do I feel 30 minutes later? How do I feel that night? How is my sleep quality affected? If you start to actually pay attention to that, you'll be amazed. You'll start to see correlations.

I would almost add that it's important to track it because I imagine That first month compared to the 6th month, if you weren't tracking it, you might forget how you felt in that first month, 6 months later. You start to think that your, your current state is your, your normal and you're forgetting how bad it was. And that's when people slip back to old habits.

Well, the interesting thing too is, and I'll have to say like travel is one of the hardest things because when I'm traveling, sometimes you're just at the mercy of what's available of where you're traveling. If it's, if you're not traveling like in a car where you can take some of your own food and go where you want to, but There's been times where I've been flying in, in cities where I didn't have a rental car, the ability, I was kind of just at the hotel and what restaurants were around. But what's interesting is I think because I am now used to my body for the most part being in a state where it feels so much better, that then when I do consume those things, it's almost like more of a flare. Like I really feel that difference. And I'm like, whew, like. I can't wait to get back to where I can, you know, eat what my normal now is because I feel the difference like right away.

That's fantastic that you have a new gauge for what normal is, you know? Now I feel like though, you are bringing up something that is not talked about that much. At least I don't hear it talked about much, which is, I think people assume that when we say homesteading, it equals healthy. And I think you're revealing that that's not always true. And I remember when you and I first met, we had a conversation about another conference. You host a fantastic conference called the Modern Homesteading Conference, but we talked about another conference. And I said to you, everyone that was walking around was extremely overweight. And I was surprised because they weren't really interested in organ meats. And I just had assumed that homesteaders would be interested. And you were like, Nope. That's not always the case. Can you dive into that a bit? Like what's your experience with homesteading and kind of the association or expectation of what it means?

So it's interesting because you have some people who are coming to homesteading because they very much don't like that their food source for the most part is dependent on supply chains, is dependent upon, you know, grocery stores that they don't have any control over it. And so you have people that are, that turn to homesteading from that desire or pain point, right? They're like, I want to know that I have got food on the shelf, that I can grow some of it myself in order to have a way to replenish it if I can't get it from the store, that I'm not reliant on You know, the stores or the establishment, you know, kind of insert whatever way people would describe that. You have some of those folks that are coming in, they're like, okay, I am just wanting to learn how to create my own food systems and all of that. And so they're not really looking at it from a health standpoint with their cooking. They're like, I'm going to cook from scratch, but it might not be with lard or with tallow. But at least they are on the path of starting to be like, I, you know, wanting to be more independent and wanting to make some of those things, even if they don't have necessarily the best of ingredients yet. Where other people come to homesteading, and I would say I would include myself more in this because I had a health issue. I had a health issue and I saw that food was the answer to that. And the more I dived into the way that our food is produced in the US, I realized I need to produce more of it myself and/or support and find companies that are producing it in a better way. We produce our own beef, but looking for regenerative agriculture on the items I can't produce myself, you know, looking for farms. We don't grow our own wheat and, and I, you know, make sourdough and bread. So I'm looking for flour sources that are heritage grains or that use regenerative growing practices, of course, aren't using, you know, synthetic Herbs and pesticides is important to me too, but also their farming practices. It was kind of like this one thing leads to a next. And so I think that a lot of people first get the draw for homesteading, for, for the people that haven't had their health affected or don't realize that their health is being affected yet. It tends to be more of, you know, I want to get away from, you know, from the man and I want to get away from the establishment and I want to take control of my own food supply and I want to take control of my own you know, family and home and that type of thing. And they just haven't realized the health part yet.

And it's interesting because this shows up in so many things, you know, in my 20 years in the health industry of like people assuming if it's organic, that means it's healthy. That's organic doesn't necessarily mean it's healthy. You could have organic sugar, organic chocolate, things that could be organic that Are not going to help you with your health. It's the same thing. I see it a lot with kosher. People assume if it's kosher meat, that it's healthy, you know, that the cows were raised healthy and humanely. And it's like, no, it's just, it's really commenting on how they're slaughtered. So in general, I think there's this category of terms that people assume are part of a healthy diet, a healthy lifestyle. And it's just like, no, not always.

Yeah.

Like gluten-free is another one. They think, oh, if you're gluten-free, you're healthy. You're like, nope. It just, it just means there's no wheat and gluten. There's so many people that are eating gluten-free that are extremely unhealthy, you know? So it's like, and products as well. I love that this conversation of like, it's more about steps, right? It's more about baby steps, having some grace, you know, with each one, but eventually getting to a place where really it's about Youth thriving. So how do you feel in your body? So you already kind of shared some, a nice first step for people, you know, focusing on the kitchen, just starting to make one thing from scratch. But I have to imagine, like, you're a 5th generation homesteader. You went through this process, this health journey. What do you find even today where you're considered a really key voice for homesteading and people look to you, but I imagine you still probably have your own struggles with your own homesteading, right? Like it doesn't just go away like, oh, I figured it all out and now I'm just coasting or does it?

Kind of with anything in life, right? Like you do reach a point where I don't want to say plateau because we think of plateau as a negative oftentimes, right? But I think in your journey, you'll kind of reach a point where you're like, okay, like with where I'm at right now, like I'm feeling, I'm feeling pretty good with, you know, with the workload, with how to do these things. It's kind of become a part of my routine. And you definitely feel like, I feel like I go through different levels of healing. So in the beginning, it was getting my stomach healed to a point where I could just eat food without being in pain. And having, you know, ulcers that were literally starting to eat away the lining of my esophagus and my stomach. And so once I kind of reached that point, then it was like, whew, you know, and it, and that was a lot of work because I had to redo ingredients and learn how to cook different things and all of those things. But I reached a point where that level felt like my new normal or felt normal. And so kind of stayed there for a little bit. And then started to realize there was some other things that were going on, but it was kind of like, you have to put out that biggest fire first. So whatever's burning the hottest, whatever's the biggest issue, like you put that out and then you're like, whew. And then started to notice in this analogy, right? Like, oh, there is some like little hotspots here. Maybe there's like some little like cracklings, like little flames here. What does that mean? And so then went on to like the next level of Gut healing. And for me, that was definitely tied to thyroid. So I had adrenal gland issues. I had some thyroid issues. And so really starting then to focus on that aspect of my health. And some of that was food. Some of that was lifestyle. You know, there's so many things kind of, kind of put in there. And so felt like I got to a point like, okay, where those levels are where they should be, you know, kind of gotten, gotten energy back. And then now I'm— I'm 44 and welcoming to the world of perimenopause, right? So then there's women's hormones that change when you start to enter into your 40s. And so now I feel like, you know, I'm on a new journey with that and figuring that out from a holistic standpoint. And how do I support that with, with my food and with my diet and lifestyle changes? And so I think as long as we're living, I think it's always going to be a journey. And we just will learn to go deeper with that healing because also our bodies, as we age and even cleaning up my, my diet as much as I'm able to, you know, the sad reality of it is, is we're still exposed to toxins. You know, there is sadly traces of glyphosate in the rain. So even though I live way out far, have never used that, there's no farms around me that use that. There will always be toxins that we can't control that will be introduced into our system. And so not to be like, oh gosh, like the sky is falling, doom and gloom. But realizing that it's going to be a continuing healing journey because there's always going to be things to a degree introduced to our systems that, you know, 100 years ago wasn't even a thought and wasn't something that our bodies had to learn how to deal with. So it's always an ongoing journey in my mind, but I think that you reach different levels of healing or you get one thing put out and then that allows you to see the next area. But I have to say, Even today, like dealing with some of those things, like I still feel so much drastically better than I did when I first started. So it's not like going, going backwards. I feel like you just kind of hit new, new levels.

I feel like it's almost like the peeling of the onion within your health. There's always layers, different layers. And sometimes, as you mentioned, certain layers have to be peeled before others are revealed. Like sometimes your body is in such extreme mode of survival that it won't even reveal what's at the core yet. Let's say a skin rash, you know, until you deal with the skin rash, it's not going to reveal the next thing that's going on because the skin rash is masking the other thing. You know, I think that's a really interesting analogy around health, but do you find that that's true even with, if we take that analogy and we equate it to homesteading? Is there kind of a peeling of the onion around homesteading? And if so, what layer of the onion are you at with homesteading?

One of the exciting things about homesteading is there are so many things to learn and do with homesteading. I mean, it's literally such a wide umbrella that you'll never be able to do it all and master it all. And to some people that might sound defeating. To me, that sounds exciting because I love to learn. Like, I'm a lifelong learner. And so I like knowing that there's always going to be more for me to learn in this lifestyle. But that being said, with a homesteading, like there definitely is, I think you have to really be honest with your evaluation of where you are right now. So for example, we have raised our own grass-fed, grass-finished beef for 23 years. And when we first started out, it was just with a cow-calf pair. And so we could breed the cow back every year. The calf, when it was 2 years of age, is what we would butcher for our own meat. And then we started to expand because we're like, well, if we raise 2, we could sell 1 and then that would make our meat almost free, right? Kind of helping to offset the cost, not counting labor costs at all, but just hard cost of feed. Now we've reached a point where we have a herd of 29 cows, which means that we have about 7 to 10 beef to sell a year to community. We don't ship, so local community only with the beef. So That part has been over the past 2 years that we were able to increase our herd size. We went from 9 to 29. And so during that time, we haven't raised any pigs. We used to raise pigs alongside that, but increasing a beef herd, tripling the beef herd size, also triples the work. We've cut back from raising the pigs. And then we were raising a lot of chickens and ducks for the community aside just from us, because I know what a difference eating food that is raised regeneratively, in my opinion, raised right, right? Ethically, morally, all of those things. Soy-free feed, not using corn, using proper pasture rotation, all of those things is super important to me. And I wanted people in my community to also have access to that if they couldn't raise it themselves, because not everybody can. However, we reached a point where we were like, Okay, doing it at this level while my husband still works a day job offsite, I am working between 3 to 4 other jobs in between some of my different companies, et cetera, was like, we can't keep up at this level. And so I think that's really important for homesteaders to realize that there is ebb and flows and it is okay to realize just because you've been doing something or it is a really good thing, I think it is very good to be able to raise food in this manner and offer it to folks who can't. However, we had to scale back for this season, and so recognizing that is kind of hard because I really do want to do it all, and I want people to have access to that level of food as well. So I think it's important with homesteading to realize you can't always do it all, even though there's so much to be done under the homesteading umbrella. So hopefully that makes sense, but that's where I'm at right now because I still I still wrestle with that. Like, we just have to set that part aside. I don't have to raise chickens for other people right now, just for us. And that's okay. I have to be okay with that.

Well, you were talking about before we recorded about the seasonality as well. Can you share? Because seasonality is really key for any homesteader, right? I mean, if you're living off the land, I moved from the West Coast, Portland, Oregon to Massachusetts, and I am not a homesteader, but yet I am clearly now beholden to the seasons. Because when it snows, it snows. Like you're, it changes your life. So I imagine that's even 10, 10 to 100 times when you are actually living off of your land. So can you talk about seasonality and how that shows up not only outside of you, but within you?

So what's interesting is, is looking at to what you talk about a lot is to that ancestral part of us. So when you look at the way that animals and plants Live within the seasons, right? So they have the time, of course, where they're in their growing and their flourishing part. And so that usually starts in spring and really goes through summer. But then as we start to approach fall and winter for both livestock and plants, they begin to store their energy to go into the hardships of winter and/or dormancy, depending on plant or animal. You've got where your plants are starting to store energy for your perennials back into their root system. You know, you have the annual plants where they're creating their flower head to create that seed, which will then become its growth for the next year. And so oftentimes as humans, we tend to want to live in that always going and go, go, go, go, go season. We don't really give ourselves much of permission or even being intentional about setting it to have some of that dormancy season. So many people find themselves in burnout stage. And because I, I have a really strong drive, people tease me and they're like, you're a hummingbird. Do you ever stop? Like, you're always going from this to this to that. And I do enjoy that, but I have found that I can't be as effective. And I do reach a point of burnout myself if I don't pull back, but I have to be intentional about it because it's not my normal tendency. And so really watching nature, both with our livestock and with the gardens and with the plants and everything, and seeing how they have to have that season of dormancy in order to have that growth for year after year after year. And if they don't, then you will see those plants and those livestock become weaker and weaker and weaker. They can still keep going for a while, but you do see that diminishing. And so being cognizant of that and also trying to mirror that within my own seasons, with the seasons of my life and what I'm doing within nature's seasons. So, you know, we're at the time you and I are recording this, of course, we're in the middle of winter. So trying to make sure that I take time to spend some slow time by the fireplace in the evenings, just recharge my batteries with things that aren't necessarily work or aren't necessarily homesteading. So that in spring and summer, I can hit the ground running and be recharged. And so for me, that's something I have to be super intelligent, not well intelligent about, but intentional about as well.

I feel like you're bringing up something that applies to everyone, no matter whether you're a homesteader or not. But I imagine it's really important within the homesteading community as well, because I feel like you're basically saying like, don't be so hard on ourselves. Like, don't expect that we have to do everything. Everything in our life has to be homesteading, you know, all the time. And that we sometimes have to honor our own state of like, hey, it's winter. And I just, I don't want to be working as hard right now. I need to be in kind of like repair mode and taking better care of myself, whatever it is, and preparing for more output later on. I feel like that's advice we all need. But I have to imagine that a lot of homesteaders specifically when they choose this path after having some contrast that they probably get really hard on themselves and they're like, I have to make everything from scratch. And, you know, like, is that kind of true or can you kind of share some of these myths or whatever that people associate with homesteading and maybe even debunk them?

Oftentimes you do see that. You see people are like, yes, I have to make everything from scratch. If I'm not every making thing from scratch, like somebody is going to come take my homesteader card, which there's no such thing as a homesteading card. I'm being, I'm being trying to be funny. Also with, with the producing part, there's a myth that like you should be producing all of your own stuff. Like if the ultimate homesteading goal is to produce every single thing that your family consumes on your own homestead. And while we produce a ton, like we raise all of our own beef. And for us, I raise all of our own, our own poultry needs. So from our meat chickens. And ducks to eggs. We're not raising our own pork right now, but pretty much almost all of our own protein we're raising ourselves. Now, we did have a dairy cow a couple of years ago, so at that point it was even producing all of our own dairy. We don't have her anymore. She, she passed away from a breech birth. But my point being is people have this thing that like, I should be producing everything. But when you look at the homesteaders of old and Little House on the Prairie, even, cuz that for most people, that's like been a historical context, at least that they've read or are familiar with. They didn't produce everything themselves, and we shouldn't be trying to produce everything ourselves right now either. What we should be doing is creating a community sufficiency in a more local source and working together for that. So there's some local farms that I found that I can order pork from. There's a local dairy that's down the road from us, so I'm getting my raw dairy. I get to go and see the cows. I get to go see the dairy anytime I want, so I can see cleanliness. I can see how they're handled and all of that. But that's been really great because I can support someone else in my community because we can't all do it all ourselves. So doing the things that, that you enjoy doing that maybe you don't have another local source from or make the most sense, but then working together within our local communities so that my money that I'm paying for that raw milk, which absolutely after producing my own milk and having it, well, I should say my dairy animal and the work that goes involved with that. It is worth every penny that she charges. I don't think that people understand the amount of work that goes into producing food until they've taken it on themselves to a level. You see the price much, much different on what to pay for things when you've put in that work. But that allows us to have other people be able to make a living and production-wise. And I think that's really important. I love to be able to support someone else. And also get something really great in return, but that money's going directly back into my community. And it means that I am not having complete burnout by having the burden of trying to do everything myself.

It's such a great point. It's definitely something I've noticed as I've dived into the more of the homesteading communities is how giving and community-based they are. They're sharing tips. There isn't this kind of that you see in sometimes other communities or even other careers where people are holding the way they do it tightly to their chest. If anything, I feel like I don't see any of that in the homesteading. I mean, is that your experience that everyone's like, oh, well, let me show you what's working for me, that it's more of that value-add and heart-based offers?

Yeah, I would say predominantly in the homesteading community, it's very open-handed because people are so excited because most of the time, most people's lives are changed to some degree or another when they start homesteading, or it was the reason that they started homesteading. In my case, that we really went the level that we did from where we were at. And so they're so excited because they're like, they feel that it is life-changing. And so they're so excited that someone else like Oh, let me help you. You know, let me give you my advice. Let me give you my wisdom. Let me tell you what's worked for me. Let me tell you what hasn't worked for me so that you can jump into it that much sooner. And even though there's a lot more awareness of homesteading in the modern context and all the health and stuff like that, it still is not what I would call mainstream. A lot of people who are doing it feel lonely. And so when they find somebody who seems to be interested in it, it's like, yes. They're so excited. So yeah, there's a lot of open-handedness, a lot of sharing, a lot of community-based, you know, relational, because it very much has been true across the board. And it's one of the reasons Modern Homesteading Conference that we see every year is we see people come back every year and they have made friends with people that they met the year before and have been able to form that. And so it's almost like a homecoming, like a little family reunion. And so it's really cool to see that. I don't think that you see that so much in, in communities that are maybe gathered around other topics.

What was the catalyst for you to start that? Because as you mentioned, you, you had enough going on, you know, you, you didn't necessarily need another thing and planning an event is a huge, huge undertaking, but I have to imagine it clearly mattered enough for you to do it. So what made it matter so much?

I had been speaking mainly on the East Coast. In Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, and a lot of different homesteading conferences for a number of years. And I would have people in my audience, uh, you know, sharing where I was going and where I was going to be. And they're like, is there anything on the West Coast? Like, I can't travel all the way to the East Coast, you know, but if there was something on the West Coast, like I could make that work. For a number of years, I just said, no, but as soon as I hear of one, like, I'll let you know. And after about 3 years, I'm like, There isn't one. There's not one on the West Coast. And I don't know of anybody doing it. I knew I couldn't do it by myself. And so my co-founder and partner with the Modern Homesteading Conference, Katie Millhorn, she was one of the only people on the West Coast that was also traveling to the East Coast to help put on these conferences. And so I just asked her, I'm like, I can't do it by myself, but would you be interested in putting one on here on the West Coast? And She's like, yeah. And so we decided to do it. And mainly because when I went to these other conferences, like I said, I've been homesteading. You know, my folks live just a quarter mile up the road from me. They've been homesteading. So I do have some homesteaders in my area, like directly in my community, which is fabulous. But when I went to the conferences and I saw all of these people there, and I have had been homesteading for decades at that point. And we learned things. My husband went with me too, and we learned things from other people at those conferences that we came home and implemented and completely changed the trajectory of, of our homestead and things that we were doing. And I was like, oh my goodness, I didn't know I was missing this. Like, I didn't know how powerful being surrounded by people and learning from other people at the same time, but all in this really intense 2-day period. It was life-changing. And so I'm like, okay, it's kinda like one of those things, like sometimes you wanna be invited to a table and you never get invited to the table. So it's like, well, I'm gonna just build my own table, invite people to that table, kind of what we did for the, the West Coast so that there was opportunity for people who couldn't travel to the East Coast that they could have an event in the West Coast. So that was really how it was born.

Why do you think there wasn't really anything established on the West Coast? It's such an interesting thing to think about, like, cuz Because clearly it does make sense. You know, as America evolved, it started East Coast, moved west, but there are lots of farms on the West Coast. So what is it that you think is the difference between the East and West when it comes to either homesteading practices or just more of the teaching of homesteading?

I don't know why there wasn't any put on in the West Coast. As far as I know, in my own personal experience, homesteading conferences themselves, like dedicated homesteading conferences, like there were health and wellness conferences, I know there've been farming conferences, probably gardening conferences, but an actual homesteading itself conference, the first large ones anyways that I know of was, I think like 2017, 2018, and they were on the East Coast. I think that people saw those. It was Homesteaders of America. They started to hold kind of several, they, they had one or two a year, I think, conferences back there. And so I think people were going to them back there who lived there because they heard about it in that area. They could travel. And then it was kind of more an awareness, like seeing like, oh, like people are wanting to come to this. This is a needed thing. And so I think it was just kind of more of an awareness back there that first happened. But yeah, there's lots of homesteads on the West Coast. There's actually a lot of farming on the West Coast as well. So as to why there wasn't one beforehand, I don't know.

This has been great. And before we actually end, I know that you, you've written, you know, multiple books on homesteading. You've written gardening books, food preservation, but you're also kind of getting into baking, right? So is a baking book coming up soon or can you kind of share a little bit about why baking's been becoming like a passion for you?

I should say cooking with baking. It's really, for me, it's coming back to that foundation of food. So I love growing and raising my own food from both livestock to fruit and to vegetable production. But really, when it comes back to being in the kitchen, and I think part of it for me is, so my oldest, my son, has officially moved out. He's almost 20. He's moved out. It's kind of that sentimental a little bit, and of course bittersweet. But now I find that I will bake what are his favorites or cook his favorites. And so now I will just send him a video or a text with a picture of it as a way to bribe him to come home, come home for a visit and get this. And so for me, it's really coming back to the kitchen because it was so foundational. It was in the kitchen first that I, you know, found healing. I feel the older I get, when I make recipes that were my great-grandmother's or my grandmother's, or now My father-in-law has passed away and so has my grandmother-in-law on my husband's side. But when the holidays come and I make their recipes, it's almost like they're still there. And so I find this emotional connection to cooking that I don't know that I had as deeply before. I've kind of found a renewed passion for being in the kitchen and making things. And also seeing that with other people as well.

I love that, that the baking is connecting you to reconnecting your family. I actually thought maybe it was that when you went down this, the health journey that you pulled away from baking, because maybe it wasn't as healthy for you or it wasn't part of the healing diet. And that maybe you've gotten to that enough healing that you could bring it back in. Is there any aspect of that?

There is aspect to that as well, because there was a period where I did cut out gluten and grains and carbs for a while to do a gut reset. But yeah, now I can bring it back. And of course now it's sourdough, ancient grains. And I do have the revised updated version of my first cookbook, Handmade, that's coming back out this May where I've got to take, you know, the past 8 years of what I've learned and update it and add new recipes. So that part's been really fun. It's coming out this May. It's available for preorder now, but I also have gotten to be at a point where I can reintroduce those things as well. And some of them I've adapted and I'm making it sourdough now, before where I wasn't necessarily doing it sourdough. So that part's been really fun though, to be able to bring those items back in, in a way that is healthier and more gut-friendly, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Because in a sense, I think Sometimes we go on these journeys, these health journeys, and then we, we think that we have to kind of live these very strict, kind of almost bland lives and not have as much vitality around the food choices we make and the happiness that sometimes comes with food. So I love that your journey that you shared started with, this is how we homestead. This is how I was taught to homestead, to then realizing I'm not thriving. I'm sick. to then reinventing it for yourself. And then not only have you reinvented it, but you're really amplifying it so that more people can discover how to get control of their food systems and how to better take care of their health through making their own food. So thank you so much for your journey. I'm sure it wasn't, there were lots of points where that was not fun, but The amount of joy you've been adding to people's lives, the community that you're not only building, but expanding upon, like supporting other people in building is a huge, huge blessing for all of us. And so when you shared that you felt blessed that that doctor saved you in a sense, or kind of showed you a different light, I believe that you have really paid that forward.

Oh, thank you.

You mentioned you have a preorder. Where can people find this preorder for your book? Where can they connect with you and learn from you?

Yeah, everything is at melissaknorris.com, which is my website. So melissaknorris.com, you'll see my podcast there. You'll see at the top little menu, there's a shop tab. You'll see the book tab, see all of that there. It's kind of the hub for everything. Thank you so much.

What does the K stand for, by the way?

Okay. Funny story. So my middle name is Kay, K-A-Y. So Melissa Kay Norris. And when I first started blogging, I thought that I was going to be a historical fiction author of all things. And so I started my website with my name because as a fiction author, you know, your website would be, would be your name. But melissanorris.com was already taken. Someone had bought the domain, but there was no website for us. And so at that time, I didn't have any income from an online world at all. And so I was like, well, I can't buy that domain. It's too expensive. But Melissa K. Norris, which was my middle initial, was available for super cheap. And so I bought that and started that blog and website, and now it's evolved to what it is today, but that's the reason for the K that's in there. Yeah.

You know, I had to admit, like, so the woman who, who started Paleo FX, her name is Melissa Norris. So I thought maybe it was her.

Oh, how funny.

I know she's behind the scenes a lot for, even though Paleo FX isn't happening anymore, but she is behind the scenes and she's been a part of the health scene for a long time, specifically the paleo one. But yeah, I have to wonder if it was her who owned it. Who knows?

Oh, it might be. I have no idea.

Thank you again for joining me. Anyone that is thinking about it, I'm sure this will air before the 2025 event, but any year you listen to this, Definitely cannot recommend enough that you check out the Modern Homesteading Conference. I've been to now, I think, 4 just different homesteading events, and it's absolutely my favorite, and it's such a beautiful community. So thank you, you and your partner for creating that.

Oh, thanks so much. I know you're going to be back there this year. I'm super excited about that and doing demos. But yeah, we would love to have anybody come to the Modern Homesteading Conference. It's just modernhomesteading.com is the website for that.

Yeah, it's in Idaho and it's fantastic. So check it out. They'll be there in the show notes. Thank you, Melissa, and thank you all for joining us this last hour. Please spread the news, share about the podcast, check out Melissa's stuff, and stay curious. More to come. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's eatpluck.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.