Abundance Plus Film Fest (Spring 2022)

I don't think we've ever been quite this busy during this time of year. Usually the late winter and into the early spring is sort of restful, but usually we have all our infrastructure in place. So, we're building everything from scratch, including the window greenhouse that we need to start the seeds. So, right now we have about 40 irons in the fire and they're all time sensitive.

One month into having a barn for the first time and I think we're loving it. Uh, getting to milk the cows out here, having nice stalls to like, we had a calf in our barn already.

And it was 20 degrees outside when the calf was born. And so having this—

Yeah, it felt like it was 20 degrees inside my body. It was really cold.

It was bad.

I'm actually getting to experience those emotions of relief in the functionality of this whole property.

Oh, he's such a sweet baby. Oh, he's so sweet. So he's only like 6 weeks.

6 and a half.

He's such a wee babe. He's getting toted around the farm by the kids, though. He'll learn.

Get in here.

It's crazy, too, how much we're enjoying milking out here, using our milk machine out here. And it's not even done. Like, we don't even have the feed room done, the milk room done. I can't even imagine how effective it's going to be. But so far, this has made a really big difference. And we've been homesteading for 8 years with no structure like this.

No, not like this. And it takes a lot of stress off of things. Yeah, like previous kidding seasons, it's literally like stressing out about do we have enough stalls for all the goats that are going to be kidding, and like we have to move this one, and it's just It takes so much capacity and shuffling and stress. But now it's like, yeah, no big deal. Plenty of space.

Less romantic than hand milking, but a lot easier. One of the big things for me in growing a garden is that I want to create spaces that are beautiful, that I want to be in. So obviously we could have thrown up something that's just functional, probably faster. But instead we're like building a window greenhouse out of reclaimed windows with like old stained glass pieces and all these things that are obviously taking a lot more time.

But we're building this property the way that we want it. We want it to be not now, but in 15, 20 years.

I would rather be a little behind one year and then have what I want all the other years. But I know where the seeds are going to start in that window greenhouse. And then we're going to get the high tunnels built and we're going to get gardens in the ground. I think that I'll be pleasantly surprised in some months. That's what I'm like hanging on to.

I agree. I think you will. Congratulations. Good job.

Good job, Scott. Nice doing business with you. We made all our plans for our garden and our farm before we came here, but what we really didn't see coming was the incredible community that was going to envelop us. So today on Wilder Still, we are taking you guys to go meet our community and to see what it is that they're doing with their dreams of homesteading and how it is that we're working together to do those things.

You ready to go?

Yeah.

Wes comes out and helps us on our farm. He's an incredible artist and just a really precious friend to us and has really showed us the importance of working together.

So Wes, you have also relocated from Alabama, that's correct, to be here?

Yeah.

And you've been here for how long?

We've been here over 3 years, 3 and a half years.

And if I'm not mistaken, we were in like a brake shop or something.

Yeah, I was getting my oil changed. We felt like when y'all, when you guys came, the timing was just unbelievable because when we first moved in here I was kind of consumed with getting the house done, but when the house was done and we moved in, I just looked across the land and it was like that word you used, hopeless. It was like, I'd never get this place to be what we're dreaming for it to be, you know, because I just didn't have the means or the equipment or anything like that. And then out of the blue, I heard the Roots and Refuge folks are moving to South Carolina. I said, well, that's neat. Why would they move to South Carolina? You know what I mean? And then saw you guys at Mavis Tire and one of your friends, Luke, his son was there and he said, you know, they're moving right down the road. And I'm like, well, that's 10 minutes from my house. So I was like, this is what we've been waiting for. And so it was like, you kind of feel hope rising up. We've got almost 31 acres. When we moved here, it was all timber except for the house and the yard, of course. And we've got some goats and we've just used the goats to clean out some areas and we come behind them and cut down saplings and burn and stuff like that. And we've kept everything as far as the chickens, our garden back here close to the house to be able to feed and to kind of keep them away from predators and whatnot.

And you got some cool chickens. What are they called again?

I have some Bielefelders, which is, I believe it's a Belgian breed. And then we have the mosaics.

Mosaics.

Yeah, that Jessica really likes.

You don't work necessarily a full-time job. You're like a contracted drawing guy.

Yeah, I do drawings. Thank you.

No problem.

Yeah, I use graphite, do commission work for folks. One day I saw a picture in a magazine and I thought it was a pretty cool picture. So I was like, I think I'll try to draw that. So I did. And I'm like, hey, that might be something here.

The idea came up that we should run some meat chickens before it got cold. Or the second episode of Wild or Still, you know, they were being dropped off at our house. They got shipped in and they brooded here because we didn't have a space for them to brood.

Yeah.

And so you handled like, you know, the first 2 weeks of feeding and watering and keeping them safe. And then they came out to our place. Then you came out, you know, a couple times a week at least, helped move them, feed them. And then in the end, we did like a big community butchering day. This one aspect of like, you know, chickens and the butchering and all that gave us so much vision for how to do classes in excellence. I think the end goal for us is the center you know, the education center of just like being able to teach lots of people and sow lots of seeds of inspiration and vision. And, you know, I'm glad to be partnered with you.

It was an advantage to me to be able to see you guys start from the beginning and to be involved in it and for us to build the relationship we have. And I've learned so much from you, you know, as far as carpentry and from Jess with gardening. And stuff like that that, you know, we can incorporate here. So it's been exciting and I've learned a lot. Just me, myself, I couldn't garden here, do what I want to do with animals, you know, and everything else by myself. It's impossible. And so we really need each other to build a community here of people that are like-minded. Want to grow their own food, but it's difficult to do that on your own. And I run up against that a lot talking to these homesteaders that are really kind of isolated and they feel like, they feel hopeless too. And I think part of my calling or gifting or whatever you want to call it is to bring people together. I enjoy doing that and I think that's important for what's, what's Hannah here, what's going to happen.

Hannah is a local. She's from this area, and she's been growing food for quite a while now. I love her passion and her conviction to do things the natural way and to grow her food at her own home. The first time we met, so I'm gonna go here. So we're at school orientation. Yes. We met because our kids go to school together. You come in wearing one of your Roots or Acres shirts and Andy wouldn't get out of the car. He was so embarrassed.

I was like, well, see, we had come through and we were heading out the door and I heard you laugh from like the other table and I was like, wait, and I grabbed his arm and I'm like, Is that them? And he looks over and he goes, I'm out.

And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, don't! You got to come with me and say hey.

And he's like, you can tell them hey yourself.

And so he leaves.

And then I came over and I'm like going like this with my store-bought tomatoes taste like disappointment t-shirt.

Well, I'm really glad you did. And that was the conversation where we kind of talked about maybe buying Hope because you said you, you would have a cow for sale, and the rest is history. In just the short period of time, even leading up to like Hope coming to my house and talking to you and like getting all the information, I still had this feeling of like, oh my gosh, can I do this? And you were extremely beneficial, and our relationship was extremely beneficial because it was like a safety net. Like, yeah, that's what I was looking for most when we first talked. And you said that you had a Jersey that you were willing to sell. I'm like, yes, I need this because it comes with a built-in mentor. I've got a person I can contact and say, hey, I think she's off. You know, what do you think?

I don't consider myself a cow expert, but I just am around them enough and I still have people that I call when I don't know what to do too.

So thank you. That's a compliment. Thank you. Well, that's the thing, though. You've been doing it for 10 years. You've been taking care of cows. And that's kind of what makes us mentors, is not necessarily being experts, but having some experience under our belt that we can share. I just didn't anticipate when we moved that 6, 7 months down the road we would be getting so established within other homesteaders that could be helpful in things like that. I kind of felt like we were going out on our own when really it was the exact opposite.

Yeah, well, you have this unique platform with YouTube that allows you to know these— for people like me to reach out to you and be like, hey, you know, I do the same thing, I think the same way. And then you kind of get to know these people. Like, you probably know more people here that homestead and are like-minded than I do because I don't do those things. And in my, like, immediate community. I mean, I've grown up here, so this is— they're either family or they're like distant family or they're distant, distant family.

That's basically it.

And it's a very like, I want to say old-fashioned, but it's more like agricultural in the— from, you know, the '60s and the '70s and the '80s old-fashioned. So there's a lot of chicken farms, there's a lot of commercial farming. The sun rises and sets on chemicals that will take care of the problem. And so me kind of like backing away from some of that and doing it my way, and they'll go, no, you can't do that, it doesn't work. It doesn't make a good dairy cow to calf share. Just being told no, that won't work, no, that won't work, and me just going, okay.

So you're like bucking the system and do it old school.

I'm just gonna do it the way I want to do it and see if it works. Because I mean, if you don't try it, you don't know. I have just kind of insulated and kept doing my thing and, you know, sometimes it works, Sometimes it doesn't work.

Right.

So it's not 100%, but nothing is. So it's neat for me to meet you and then like to know there are other people that want to do it this way.

Yeah, the natural homestead, small-scale thing.

Yeah.

And it's actually been very refreshing for me that like you're just doing this. I'm just doing it. And it's like no cameras, no pictures. Like, you just— I got a lot of pictures on my phone, but that's the extent of it. I'm like, see? Yeah, but I mean, like, this is just regular life. Yeah. And I love that because that's really what is the deepest desire of my heart. Like, I wanted this before social media, and I would still have it without social media. But sometimes when you're always putting on a camera on something you go, is this why I'm doing this? You have to kind of always balance that thought. And then coming here and like talking to you and kind of, no, it's not. It kind of helps me connect with that part of myself. It's like, no, I'm just a farm girl that wants to grow my food. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, it's something I don't think I've even told you that, but like that's been really encouraging to me. It has been very cool to me to come to a place where you could feel completely foreign but have friends already there and like people who are already invested in you and like that I can actually connect with and invest back. It's really sweet. So I genuinely appreciate, um, just everything and your friendship. Well, thank you.

Same here.

Jesse and Chassidy grew up in this area. And they just got into homesteading at the beginning of the pandemic year. It's been really incredible to watch them try things for the first time and see just how much they can grow exactly where they are. They've been incredible friends that have felt a lot like family right off the bat.

Once the whole pandemic started, we decided to kind of buckle down and start homesteading. And grocery stores and stuff running out of food, it just makes you really rethink your process and stuff. Then I was like, well, I guess I need to learn more, and what better way to learn than on YouTube? So of course I start looking up homesteading, and first one you come to is Justin Rhodes, and then it suggested, you know, goes to y'all, and then You know, the Hollers, really just all kinds of, you know, snowballs into every YouTuber who does homesteading. So because you, you can learn from anyone, even first-timers like myself, man. I might come up with an idea that someone else has not thought of.

Sure.

And, um, so that's how, that's how it happened. And my work schedule isn't the worst. I work 12-hour days, so I have a lot of days off during the week, and it's nice. And I don't miss out on it as much as I used to when I had a 9-to-5. But I still just find myself craving wanting to be at home. I just want to be present.

Yeah.

This isn't your first time on Wilder Still, is it?

It's not.

I have— I got a cameo in, what was it, episode 2?

Yeah, episode 2, you guys have actually seen Jess before. He's a pivotal role in episode 2.

There's some behind-the-scenes lawn mowing going on. There might be a cowboy hat involved too.

You've definitely caught the farm expansion virus or something.

It happens.

So you've got pigs now. You didn't have pigs then. I didn't. What else have you added? I know you've added other stuff.

Ducks, chickens, goats, now the pigs. Before we even had the goats, my wife was like, we need a livestock guardian dog.

Yep, there he is.

So we got another dog. Coming out and meeting you and Jess, I wasn't in the best place. I felt very alone. Of course, you know, I had my wife. We're best friends, but there's just— there's male relationships that you need that's hard to find. And one thing that really drew me close to y'all is just how open y'all were and how open you are with your faith and really made me want to become closer to God. I felt a lot of resentment, and then talking to you about stuff, it really opened my eyes to He— even though I felt like He was still talking to me, He was still guiding me, He was still leading me, and teaching me to be okay with myself before I can be okay with other people.

Right.

Y'all have made a big impact on our family. Through being around y'all, you've opened up doors for— now, I mean, I'm very close with your brother Noah and Wes and everybody I've met through the YouTube community and, and being at the farm.

It's been huge for us to get connected with people like you and families like you. Before coming here, you know, we didn't have just a strong community. We had, like you said, we had friends, but there was not a community like this, if that makes sense. And I think that for as fast as it's happened for us, it was like, it's almost like, like you said, like God would say, hey, this is where I wanted you to be, and it's okay to to trust, really. There's this like hospitality, really, but like kind of even a step further than that, that we had never experienced. I think that has really pushed us and shown us it's okay to be vulnerable again and to be willing to have deep relationships.

We met Lancer Shull, the mayor of Batesburg, right after moving, and I love the vision that he has for this area. He really cares about the town of Batesburg-Leesville. He has such an incredible vision to see this small town come alive in a way that's not just big business. It's really about the people. But what I really love about Lancer is that he's a a great example of suburban homesteading. He's permacultured his yard, which is right in the middle of town, and grows a lot of food. It's just really incredible to see. I'd actually come and walked through downtown Batesburg in 2019, and just something about that area really just pulled on my heart. But I will admit, we were wavering just a little bit because I just was like, man, I was getting discouraged because we weren't finding anywhere, but I sat and talked to you and you kind of just shared your heart for this area and your plan and your vision, and it really settled the matter for me. I was like, we don't have a place yet, but this is going to be it. I see your love for this community and I want to partner with that.

What you are bringing in is going to be a shot in the arm, and unfortunately You know, like you said, I do have a passion for it and love the people in Batesburg-Leesville. And so we have worked to put an infrastructure and kind of built this path. We're just moving in this direction to make all that stuff happen.

It's really cool that you have this passion in homesteading, that you're here on this, this city lot. You are in the middle, middle —of the city and of the town. And you're growing so much food. You've permacultured your yard into something really productive. How cool is that, that here it comes? Well, yeah.

Is it irony?

Is it divine intervention?

I don't know. You know, my journey probably started just from a, you know, health and food type journey, reading Omnivore's Dilemma, which then led me to to, you know, folks at St. Normal. So Joel Salatin went up to Polyface and met with him and talked to him for a long time. I mean, I've always kind of gardened. I was from a— I grew up in a small town or on a farm in Missouri, so my parents gardened and stuff like that, so that was in there. But I spent a lot of time, you know, I lived in Kansas City, I lived in Los Angeles, so I've been around the block, but I wanted to come back to a place and really kind of make something. Yeah. And it's, you know, the satisfaction of opening up the cupboard and seeing, you know, 27 quarts of green beans is pretty awesome. It's huge. It doesn't take much space to do those things. Yeah. And I think if you, like you guys, live your life by example, then you, you know, you just do it and everything else kind of falls in place.

You don't need your ideal 20 acres in the country to grow a bunch of food. Start where you are. You'd be shocked. And when we finally did move to our space in the country, we had 4 acres. We grew most of our food on 4 acres, which is— was plenty. We weren't even using all of it, really harvesting a massive amount of food. And so this is a really cool example that you're setting for people.

I became a single dad in 2012, and I— it started with just baking making some bread. You know, it all builds, it builds on top of each other. So I didn't start with raised beds and a corn plot and everything. You know, my advice to people is just do something. Pick one thing and do it. And whether that's learning how to bake bread or getting 3 hens or just a little raised bed and just, just start.

That is such sage advice. I say that so often because because truly we can make things seem like they're so out of reach when really the main thing that's holding people back from food sustainability is themselves and not starting. I love coming and seeing your place. I'm so excited for the dreams we both have for Batesburg-Leesville and for this whole region. And I think, you know, let's put those things together. Let's teach the world how to grow food.

Let's do it.

I'm super excited. Thank you.

Terry and Lisa are our neighbors. They're the part of this place we really didn't see coming. We knew we were going to have this beautiful land and this beautiful farm, but we didn't know that one of the biggest values of this place was the people that were living next door. I love the way they care for people and how much they know about this land and this area. It's been invaluable, and their willingness to help and take us in like we're their own kids has been absolutely amazing.

When I first met you, really, yeah, you came, you came in, just came in the trailer, you know, and sat down over there and we started talking, and, you know, I hadn't really never met you.

Yeah, I know.

You wanted to borrow my truck. I remember that. You know, it's hard to just let somebody borrow a $60,000 tractor, you know, that you've never seen, that I've never seen or know anything about. And, uh, but I said, well, you know, I'm a neighbor and, uh, I gotta help you, you know. This is my thinking. So I said, yeah, you know.

So he didn't say that immediately, though, did he?

It took him a little bit. But anyway, I had a— shortly after that, the conversation was, well, I got a skid steer coming, I got a tractor coming, I got a tractor coming, you know, and you're welcome to use that as much as you want. Yeah, as much as I want to. So now we're to the point that whatever, you know, it's yours, mine, and yours, and we just do it.

We're just going to get stuff done.

Yeah, to be perfectly to be perfectly honest, when we moved over here, we were moving to get away from a lot of the hustle and bustle, we called it, you know, where we lived at the other place. And we kind of wanted quiet and no neighbors. I can't be more pleased than than I am to have y'all. I mean, it's just, it's worked out great. We feel like y'all are family, and anybody I let walk in my back door without knocking or anything, that's a good relationship.

My kids come over and get snacks on the daily.

Right, right. So we're very pleased and happy that y'all are here.

The best part of this relationship is definitely definitely the bonus parents and grandparents that my kids— I just feel safe. They feel fulfilled. I mean, parents has been a hard subject for me, right? Especially since my mom died, right? Um, you know, my dad's still alive and we have a pretty good relationship, but I wouldn't say it's like— it's not the best. And, you know, I don't want to dishonor or anything, but it's just You know, that's just the truth. Like, I've had a struggle with parents. It's very fulfilling and an empty spot for me especially to have that relationship.

We feel honored. You know, God always works things out. Yeah. And it had to be his hand in it for a long time. You know, y'all are like our children now. Y'all have the same age as our children. So, you know, we got 6 more grandkids than we had. So, and I think it's a good relationship.

Our farm, it is a classroom for the study of the relationship of all things. Whenever we are building this ourselves as an example for other people to grab a hold of, it can all truly be good.

It can all work together.

You can't lie to a horse. You can go up to a horse and you can try to, you know, bluff them and, you know, I know what I'm doing or I'm confident. And if you're not really confident or you're not matching on the outside who you are on the inside, I mean, the horse doesn't, doesn't take them any time at all to figure that out.

It takes a very particular type of person to, to be able to follow that, that path of, of working with horses and with animals because it's not one that's, you know, straight, straight down the road, turn left, turn right. It's kind of more of like a winding river. It curves back and forth and it lets the horse lead where it needs to be.

It's not the horse's fault. And what that means is, is when you get into a situation with a horse, maybe it's not going the direction you want it to go, or it's pushing against your leg, or it's trying to buck you off, or wanting to go to the gate, you know, our first instinct is to go, "Well, this stupid horse, like, it won't go how I want it to go, and I don't like riding this horse, and what's wrong with this horse? You need to fix this horse." And so So when you go to a horseman and you say those words, like, you will get an explosive nuclear reaction back at you because what you learn after years of working with animals is it's all a reflection on you.

When I first met Jill, she was, you know, kind of a Bible thumper. She was very, you know, she was very religious, went to church on Sundays, you know, toed the line. Was what you would expect to see, you know, a homegrown religious Christian young woman. That's kind of exactly what she portrayed.

So ever since I was tiny, as long back as I can remember, church was a huge part of our life. I mean, I had the horse part of me, but I would say even more so back then as a child, my identity was church. From a young age, I was trained to be very participatory in churches. Like, that was what good girls do. And I definitely wanted to be a good girl. You know, we were there Sunday morning, Sunday night, on Wednesdays, on every other time the doors were open. From a very young age, I was teaching Sunday school and playing piano and helping in the nursery and, you know, volunteering. So it was, it was very much all we did. Everything we did was tied to this church and this group of people. In those type of churches, the church I was raised in was an independent fundamental Baptist church, they're really strict and they keep a lot of control over the members. And one of the ways they do that is making sure that everybody's kind of the same. Like we dress the same, we talk the same, we don't watch certain movies, we don't listen to listened to certain music. At our church, we ate certain foods, like baking homemade bread was really important. And like, it was a little bit higher on the spiritual ladder if you did whole wheat bread from scratch versus buying it at the store. Homeschooling was another really important piece. So like, if you didn't homeschool your kids, you just kind of second-class citizen. Like, we didn't say that, but it was very much understood. And on one hand, that's a really comforting environment as a child because you kind of have that village atmosphere. I knew all the adults, I knew all the children, and we grew up together to a point, and it was warm and happy and, you know, all the memories and all the camaraderie. But the other side of that is the belief system that that church was built on. The beliefs you're given or that are imparted upon you as a child, they stick. Like, you build your entire framework of who you are on those beliefs. And as I got older, primarily in my 20s, I started to look back at some of the pieces of my childhood in that church. And I realized that there were pieces that didn't feel right. And there were pieces that I had took hook, line, and sinker that were, you know, I would preach them from the rooftops. And if any of my friends expressed doubts or they were uncertain about their faith, I was the first one there to be like, I have the answers, I have the path "Let me help you out. I will help you out." And so, you know, I'd come from this cohesive, homogenous environment where questions were discouraged and we just didn't even think to ask them. And if you did ask them, it meant you were a doubter and that you were in serious trouble. And I just started to be honest with myself and go, you know, this just doesn't feel right. But I was scared to death to push it any farther than that. Like, I didn't even want to say it out loud. And so I buried that for a while.

Basically in the middle of the Wi-Fi guy, we're hitting that little bubble right there where light Is there? Okay. So we live on what are called the High Plains Grasslands. It's— our elevation is 6,000 feet, and it's, it's just a lot of grass. I mean, we have the Rocky Mountains, we have Laramie Range that are— you can see there's obviously trees and all kinds of stuff over there in the mountain range, but where we are, just on the flat, flat grasslands, it's— it, it can be pretty barren. Chuckwater town is now off of I-25, the interstate that runs through here, and a lot of people blame the interstate on kind of killing Chuckwater. So just having that increase of traffic and accessibility via The interstate has taken a lot of people out of Chugwater. The industries have left Chugwater. Biggest employer in town is probably the school district. A lot of rich history here. You know, when other parts of the country were fighting the Civil War, our part of the country had no idea any of that was going on. They were raising cows.

So I think everybody knows a little girl who is horse crazy. That's fairly common. I think I was in the realm of that. I was kind of extreme. I was super extreme, kind of to a freakish point of loving the horses and, and being obsessed with horses since I think 3. And so that was my primary passion in life from age 3 all the way up to age 18. And so I got to that point where you're, you know, graduating and everyone's like, what are you gonna do with your life? And I couldn't figure it out. I did not know what I wanted. I went to different colleges and I did the whole testing and the career counseling, and I had everyone try to help me, and nothing sounded right. Like, it sounded so horrible, like a life sentence. And so I found this little college in Cheyenne. I had to drive down here in the middle of winter and try out for the program. It was an in-person writing interview for this college, and I got in and decided that was my big adventure. You know, I was 18 years old, leaving home for the first time. So I decided to move 1,200 miles away from anything and anyone I'd ever known. In this pursuit of this horse dream. I didn't know anybody here. I didn't have any family here, but I had horses here. And that's really all that mattered at that point. I worked at the barn and my job every morning after rodeo practice the night before was to scrape the liquid cow manure out of the alleyways. And there would be like about 6 inches and you'd have like this scraper on the concrete alley. And there was this crew of electricians.

And I noticed there was this guy wiring And she was in there cleaning up horse pens or mucking out pens from the rodeo or the roping the night before. And I just— she just immediately caught my eye like, wow, look at, you know, look at her.

I don't remember a lot of those first interactions. Apparently for him, it was like love at first sight. Oddly enough, I was pretty shy, I guess.

I didn't have a way to just like run up and be like, hey, let's go out on a date or something. So I kind of stalked her for a little bit, figured out where she what she drove and left a flower there and a note for her with my phone number on it. And she called me. So the rest was history.

Up till this point, we were, I guess you call city kids, right? I mean, I'd done the horse thing and I'd had started to build that repertoire of experience, but we were still very much green in the ways of agriculture and the world as far as that goes. So we knew we wanted the kids, but we didn't want them in minivan or the house in town. And so we were like, well, what else is there? There is no other path, especially since we come from pretty conventional families and everyone around us was very much happy to be plugging along that prescribed trail. I didn't know I wanted a homestead. I didn't know what homesteading was back then. I didn't want to be a farmer. I didn't really care about gardening. I just wanted a place to keep the horses. I didn't want to put them in a stable. I wanted them on my property. Because ever since I was a little girl, it was my dream to look out the window and my horses, you know, right out there.

We wanted to have a place of our own that was still, still had that element of rawness to it. Yeah, I feel like so much of, especially in our country, you know, everything has been subdivided into neighborhoods and into all these little systems that basically take care of everything for you. Your water's taken care of, your trash is taken care of, your city sanitation is taken care of, you know. And I'm like, there's just, there's a part of this rawness that I, I don't want to be a part of that. I want to, I want to go where none of those systems exist. So that was what our search initially began looking for. And when we found this place, obviously it fit the bill. The house had been recently remodeled, but everything around it just, you could just tell it was overgrown and hadn't been taken care of. So a lot of our friends, a lot of our family looked at us like, "Why are you guys doing this?

You don't want to buy that place." So we had bought this land for horses, and then not too long into that, we decided it needed to be semi-productive just to make ourselves sleep better at night. And that opened the door into compost piles and gardens and eventually chickens that led into goats that led into milk cows. And before we knew it, we were what you call full-fledged homesteaders with all the fixings.

Do you have a scarf in here, or is it out in the bedroom?

That was my scarf.

Uh, let's see.

So it's kind of funny that now I am known as like the organic gardening cooking girl because back in the day, you know, young adult newlywed, I I couldn't have cared less about what we were eating. I used to make fun of people who bought organic. Like, I thought it was ridiculous and a waste of time, and I just, I thought it was just a lot of fuss about nothing. The thing that changed that was our first child, and I think that's a common experience for a lot of moms is, you know, you're footloose and fancy free until you bring this other human into the world that you're responsible for, and you're like, you know what? I need to start paying attention, and I want to feed them properly as they grow, and I need to take care of my own body. And Leslie, horses should stand all day since they're so cold.

Wait, where'd you put that?

Why'd you move that? Because this is too drafty and they had more straw over there. What am I eating? And where is it coming from? And what is this ingredient? And why is there this, you know, artificial sweeteners and corn syrup and everything? And I started to ask those questions. Which led me down this giant path, rabbit trail, if you will, of, well, I don't really think this is great for us, and I'm gonna stop buying this, and I'm gonna learn how to make this from scratch. And so that's been a really big growth experience for me, whether I'm asking myself, is homeschooling right for us with how we're educating our children? Am I giving my children what they need? Do they have enough social interaction here, 100 million miles from civilization? Or, you know, did we pick the right place to put down roots? We have some pretty hardcore roots right now with businesses and our home. We put a lot of time in our homestead. It's also extreme weather and wind and not a lot of people. Did we pick the right place? I don't know. So I think this whole homesteading journey has been a It's been a process of us asking questions, a lot of questions. And the biggest one has been, why do we have to do it like everybody else?

I feel like in life we can paralyze ourselves by the stories we tell ourselves. I'm not good enough to do this, or I don't come from the right pedigree or the right genetic line or the right background or have, you know, whatever, whatever those stories are. Those stories can weigh us down, and I know I had my fair share of them for a long time that just kept me imprisoned.

I heard an author call it once a thought-terminating cliché, where there's these things we say, whether it's race, religion, or other things, that as a society it's kind of accepted that if someone speaks this to you, you just shut down discourse. Like, okay, that's— I guess I hit the brick wall. It's fine. We're done.

I'll change the subject.

What is the story I'm telling myself?

Sometimes just identifying that story, saying it out loud, writing it down, in and of itself is enough to kind of start to crack that, to start to Stepping across that line for the first time, even reading certain authors, I was scared to tell certain friends the books I was reading because it automatically put me in a different camp, and that's dangerous and that's forbidden. And so crossing that line for that first time was one of the scariest things ever. What if this thing that I've believed my whole life, or this thing that I've been told is the only way, is not the case? Like, what would, what would that mean? And what would, what would happen?

I didn't grow up in church. We didn't You know, we went off and on maybe as a kid every now and then to like a Sunday school type thing, but we didn't have a, you know, like a home church, or we just really didn't go to church that much. Religion to me is not as structured. It's not as legalistic as it was for Jill. And so kind of in the culture that she grew up with, you know, there's just nothing but rules and regulations, and you got to walk this straight line where I didn't see it that way.

And I kept doing the church thing and going to church here in Wyoming and checking off the boxes, because there's certain things you do to keep yourself in good standing in a church community. And I know, I knew how to play the game very well. I could stay under the radar and no one would have second-guessed. And then that started to feel really incongruent. And it just started to feel bad because I was showing up and I had my dress on and I played the piano and I'd be there with a smile and I And the whole time I'd be sitting there in the service going, "This isn't who I am anymore. Like, I feel like God is pulling me out of this. He's saying, 'Hey, there's more, like, come over here.'" But I was still putting on a show so I wouldn't be questioned because, like, you know, tribes and clubs are really hard to leave. We had been traveling a lot. I was pregnant and super sick. And so we just had— we knew there would be a good couple months of Sundays that we wouldn't be around to go to church, but we had the intention of going back after that. And then once we finally got home from our trips and the morning sickness went away, you know, Christian and I looked at each other and said, I think we need to, to just stay home on Sundays for a while and kind of figure things out. It wasn't an issue with a particular church or a pastor. It was totally us. It was totally an internal thing. You know, you got to be true to yourself, even if you're going to lose friends and even if it's hard on you. At some point, you got to quit hiding who you are, which It's way easier said than done. You know, it's way easier, especially when you know what— I was that person, so I know what they're going to think when I tell them what I actually believe. I know exactly what they're going to think. It was painful. We got pushed back. We had people confront us. We had people kind of reject us. To this day, there's people that I know they, they believe what they want to believe about what we're doing. And that really bothered me. I shed a lot of tears over that, what they were thinking and what they were saying. And I've learned that, you know, that's okay. I can be okay with that now. And they're on their path and they believe what they believe. And I'm on my path and I'm doing what I need to do. And so we've had to kind of go back into damage control a little bit. And to this day, I don't have answers to all the questions that I asked back then or the questions that I ask now. But I think the most powerful piece of that is I learned how to sit in the gray and I learned how to be okay in the gray. And that was the first time in my life that I, I knew what grew. Was. Everything before that was black and white, right or wrong, always in every single thing, whether we were talking food or we were talking how you're going to get to heaven. Like, it was always the one way and the only way.

It's like you start off with a blank sheet of paper and you go, I don't— what am I doing now? Who am I?

If you asked anyone who Jill was in my early 20s or, you know, in college, she was the— she was the good Christian girl. So to come out of that and eat my words a little bit and now be the person that, you know, almost 20 years ago I would have confronted and told them they were lukewarm and they were backsliding. Now, to be that person is pretty humbling, and taking that responsibility and pushing back against the tendency towards victimhood, which is a really human thing, you know, that's been a really powerful lesson.

This idea of personal responsibility. How far can we take personal responsibility and just accept the things that we have done or that we want to do versus always having some sort of out, always being able to just push this off to, well, this is somebody else's problem. There's always an avenue for deflecting something.

After we left the church, I was feeling a little bruised. I had this perception, whether it was true or not, that people in the community were maybe annoyed with us or thought poorly of us. And I just kind of hunkered down and I pulled inward, spent a lot of time just contemplating and reading and figuring out what I did believe and what was I willing to say out loud. I don't know exactly when that period ended, but there was just this point where I'm like, you know what, I feel like I'm good. I feel healed. I feel like I'm ready to move forward. So we started to think about what would it look like for us to kind of invest into the community again in a different way. And I'd been driving by this store for years and just couldn't stop thinking about it, just kind of in the background. And I kept thinking, you know, what if, what if this was a part of the next piece of our story?

We really both felt drawn into investing into the community, investing into the people, and being able to just, you know, give us opportunities to rub elbows with, with more people and help influence those people and probably have some of those people influence us. Jill and I had the conversation of, if we're going to develop Chugwater, if we're going to help Chugwater grow, then let's just take action. So that's what we did.

I know that being a Cheyenne resident that the soda fountain has always been there, but to be honest with you, it's always kind of been, mm, yeah, it's the soda fountain. Fountain, um, until Jill got a hold of it.

When we bought the soda fountain, we knew this was just as much of an investment into the community as it was an investment into a business. You know, if you're looking for just a place to park some money, the soda fountain's not the place to do it.

Since she's been in there and her and Christian have redone that, they've really breathed some new life back into that. It's completely transformed. It looks great.

You know, it started with something so tangible— chickens and getting eggs and baking bread and examining what eating, and it turned into this healthy questioning about everything, which has brought us into some of the very best things in our life, whether it's been relationships or businesses or opportunities. You know, I didn't used to be a safe space. I was very judgmental and very rigid and very hard And now there's people who are able to come to us and that we're able to guide or mentor or just be a sounding board that I wouldn't have been able to be before because I was so hung up on being right. You know, we've been already diverging into our own path as being the homesteaders and, and being the entrepreneurs, and now I kind of feel like we're diverging once again into maybe a different type of homesteader and a different type of entrepreneur. Those are the principles I'm chewing on right now, and it excites me and it scares me because I don't know where we're going to end up. And, you know, there's that fear of the unknown and what, you know, am I doing this right and where is this going to put me in 10 years? But it's good. I'm ready to ride the roller coaster and see where it takes us.

If there's meaning in life, then there has to be meaning in death. And if there's meaning in death, there's meaning in suffering.

Papa, is it all right if I'm putting everything in a bag? Yes. Not in a bag bag, but this in a bag.

Let me see the bag.

Where is the bread? Oh, don't put it—

did you put an ice pack in there?

Yes, I put two. Oh, you want the gel again?

No, hairspray lights fires. Put it away.

We brought it. There's a couple things that are different about Rebecca and I's relationship from most is one, we spend practically all our time together.

You know, we work from home.

We school from home. Heck, we even home birth.

We've never really had traditional family roles, ever. I mean, I guess he, like, had a job when we first got married, and that was pretty traditional. But then, like, once we had kids, he was always like, I'm gonna be the one that reads So that's my night.

Our ability to question the norm, to go against the mainstream, you know, that was starting with, you know, starting to homeschool and then eating healthy organic food and eventually growing the food. Well, I have this terrible sense of direction. This, and I daydream, so I have two things going against me. So I'm constantly missing turns, I'm constantly getting in trouble, yelled at from her, and she's taking it personal and wrong. I'm missing her turn, we're going to her appointment, you're off in la-la land. You know what? You know how to get around town. You drive. And she doesn't daydream, she's focused, and I'm sitting in the passenger seat Answering member texts, going through emails, writing sales pages, whatever, doing something for the business.

Lily says that Justin doesn't know how to turn on the washer and dryer, but I'm pretty sure he does. Justin cooks. Justin cleans.

You know, I'll do so much for baby Henry. You know, I can hold him, I can rock him, I can even put him to sleep, but I don't have boobs. So she ultimately, eventually, Henry needs her.

Papa can pretty much do anything. He can't cook as good as you. Because like the kids will be like, this is so good. He's like, that's because your mother cooked it. Yeah, he doesn't drive that fast either.

He doesn't drive as fast as me?

It doesn't matter if it is Who's doing it or who's not. Does it work for us? It's not a stretch for our kids to have to do the chores. It's not a stretch for our kids to cook because again, Mom doesn't cook every day at 4. Pop doesn't cook every day at 4. We actually all cook. We all do chores. It's not even traditional roles or non-traditional roles. It's just about us doing as much as we can together.

How long is that? 6:30 right now. It's probably like—

probably gonna be here like 8 more minutes or 5.

There is an ugly side to homesteading. The— what you see on Instagram, and it's all the pretty gardens and happy animals. That doesn't necessarily hold true all the time. I hadn't realized how sick he was. Like, I knew he was sick, but we were over here for the Fourth of July and fireworks had scared the sheep and a couple of the cows, and they busted out of their fence, and we had to go chase animals. Well, when we were chasing the sheep and the little cow, there was one point he had reached out to grab the cow, and it got away from him, and he slipped, and he fell flat on his back on the ground. Didn't even try to catch himself. And, you know, I'm like 10 feet away from him, And I see this, and that was when it dawned on me how bad it actually was. He was moving around like he was 80 years old. It was hard to watch.

This time, the level of care that I had to give him was so much more intense than when he had Lyme disease. Sure, he was in pain, but this was like debilitating, excruciating pain that I've never seen before. Like, I've never seen anything like this. I definitely had some PTSD happening from the Lyme, you know, like going back to that, like, is, is this that? Is this like another chronic illness that we're going to be dealing with 10 years from, from now?

My story has been Lyme disease, this chronic illness that's just plagued me, but it plagued me in this sort of subtle way, you know, just a nagging foot pain that just never goes away, is constantly there, you know, but, but it's been bearable. This has been the 10 years struggle with Lyme disease, boom, compacted into 3 months where I'm actually bedridden. Like, I actually can't get up and push through this pain to help you if I want to. When we had—

when he had the Lyme disease in the beginning, we didn't have such a homestead. We were homesteading, but it was easily scaled back. Well, we had Ethan, and he was helping us keep the chickens basically alive. So he was doing that, and then we didn't plant a garden. We went from, you know, growing massive amounts of food and selling it to not even having a garden.

Here's Pop, who's been chronically ill for a while, and it's just this annoying, nagging pain, but he's been able to push through. But now we get this thing out of left field that totally takes him out. Things are gonna have to shift and change in the dynamics of the home and the dynamics of the farm. To make that big change, like selling livestock, That's a big decision because if I'm better in 5 months, well, the livestock's gone. And that's something that takes 2 years to build.

We have breeder sheep. We have breeder pigs. We, you know, our milk cows, breeders. I was like, let's just sell it all. Like all the animals. Like, let's just downsize it right now because it's hard.

It's not the easiest thing in the world. To be a 42-year-old man on a cane in front of tens of thousands of people. That's my job, to show our life, good, bad, or ugly, and it's been ugly now for months. Something has to change. Are we gonna put these kids in school? We're gonna have to put these kids in school. And do you see what's happening here? If we're gonna— nothing wrong with putting your kids in school. There's a total place for that. But do you see what's happening here? If we're putting our kids in school, which was one of the very first things we did to buck the system, to go against the mainstream, we're putting our kids in school, our world's getting rocked. 'Cause that means we're gonna question everything. The organics, the food growing, what's next if the kids go to school? The farm, that's what's next. 'Cause we need them to run it. Like, this is gonna be a drastic world change for us. Insistent on being together is now thinking about breaking it up? And it would force the question of, who are you? And what are you doing with your life?

When we told them back on the tour that we were going to sell this place and move, they all just cried. And it really took me back. I was shocked.

I was like, what? Like, why?

They're really attached to our animals. They're really attached to this way of life. When we kind of talked to them about like, well, should we downsize? They were like, no, we don't want that.

It really changed—

I think it showed Justin and I how much they're invested here.

One of the things that was really cool to see through all of this was how his boys really stepped up. All of them, the whole family stepped up. The boys are doing all the chores. Lily's milking cows.

It was amazing to watch. Basically, without even asking them, they get— it's like they get up earlier now.

I don't think they would have stepped up if this hadn't happened. Nobody's going to work that hard if they don't have to, especially a kid. I mean, my kids are hard workers, but at the same time, they're still kids and they still need time to play and be kids.

It's amazing to see that even though he's down, down for the count, they never missed a day. They never had a day where it's like, yeah, I guess the cow's not getting milked. The kids stepped up. That's, that's a testament to their raising. It's a testament to the kids. It's a testament to Justin and Rebecca.

I'm super proud of them, like, for all that they've given. You know, like, when push comes to shove, like, they got our back. We've been married for 20 years, and then we dated for 5 years before that. And we started dating when we were 16 and 17. And it's like, I don't know, we just, like, get each other. We are like peanut butter and jelly. Like, it's just— we've— I don't know, it's like an honor to give back to him what he's given to me. Like, he has taken so much care of me in times, you know, I mean, having 5 children, that's just that alone, the postpartum part of giving birth to a child that a husband gives to his wife. I have been able to give a fraction of that back to him.

I need her. For so much more now, but I've seen her flourish. Her love is so rooted and deep that she now gets to express it in a way that she didn't before. This is nothing compared to what so many other people are going through. This isn't terminal. I have a 3 to 5 month hope window. You know, I thought about it recently when I hit a goal in my business. We had hit 12,000 members for Abundance Plus, and I thought, am I happy now? No, I actually wasn't any happier at 10,000 members than 12,000. I'm not any happier. And I thought, well, what is— what— what— then that needs to be my goal, not 12,000 members. Happiness needs to be my goal. But what is the secret to happiness? Because once I kick this, I'm not happy. I thought the secret was in health. I mean, if you don't have your health, Who cares? You could be Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, $5 million an hour, and you feel like this? Life sucks. And I thought, would I be any happier though if I were better? And I actually thought, no, actually, no, no. Even health is not the secret to happiness. There's so much more to my life than me doing. We don't serve homesteading, homesteading serves us. So what is this secret? Well, it's It's just contentedness and thankfulness. You know, it's just been surviving and getting by, but now, little hope. A step. Getting out of the bathtub without swearing.

I mean, when you don't have hope, you don't have a future, it feels like. My quest to, to help him heal is not going to be over until he's can walk pain-free. We have each other's back, like we really do. Like, no matter what, it doesn't matter. Like, we're here for each other.

We're here for it.

My roots go deep here. Being the third generation to farm this land.