Curtis Stone on Finding The Perfect Homestead Property

Do I hunt?

Yeah.

Not fully as much as I'd like to, but it's definitely in the cards for us because our property is— we could live off wild game here year-round easily.

Yeah.

We have whitetail deer, mule deer, turkeys, moose, elk, sometimes elk, bear, though I don't like really like bear meat, tons of grouse. Uh, we have so much wild game out here, man. It's, it's amazing.

I, people will ask me if I hunt. That's pretty much a pretty close second question. You know, do you have goats? Once they find out your homestead. And I tell them though, I don't hunt. I don't have a problem with it, but it's like, I'm a control freak. I like to, you know, raise them to this amount of date. We're going to go pull the trigger at 9 and slit the throat and we're going to be done within. 4 or 5 hours or whatever it is. It's more time.

I like that too.

Yeah, but I was thinking about it. Go ahead.

No, I was just saying I like that too. I only really raise birds right now for livestock up here. Ruminant animals are kind of tricky on my land right now. Uh, once I have been here longer and my pastures are more dialed in, maybe. Yeah, maybe like one milk cow, but I doubt that even. I'm in a mountain region, you know, like your climate is so different than mine because you're temperate. And you got natural grass everywhere. That's not like that up in these mountains.

Yeah, I was, uh, we're definitely going to get into your off-grid story and how you went from the urban, the urban guy to this wild terrain, uh, out in the wild. But, uh, when you said— okay, so when I went, I went and harvested our bull. So we had had this guy for 6 years. We got him when we got back from the Great American Farm Tour. So So we bond with this guy. When you're doing regenerative, you're moving them every day. You have a relationship. He becomes a friend.

Yeah.

Well, that's hard to pull the trigger.

Yeah.

On this guy 6 years later. And I'm thinking, you know, I'm thinking that's really not— if you look at the grand scheme of things, the indigenous people and whatnot, they didn't have these relations, these like, they had a relationship. You know what I'm saying? They seem more animalistic or spiritual. But to shoot something in the wild is— you didn't have a relationship with it.

Yeah, you do in a different way, though. And, you know, as an admirer of indigenous cultures, they do in a way in that in indigenous cultures— I can't speak for all of them, but at least the ones in Canada that I'm familiar with— it is a relationship with the land as a whole. And that's even what, you know, that's where Canada technically got its name. Was when some of the settlers asked the, the, the natives if that was their land. And they, and, and they didn't under— they don't understand. They didn't have the idea of property, you know, but they had the idea of the land and this connection to the creator and this abundance that comes from the land. And so they had it in a different way, you know, and, and they really do give reverence for the animals. And we try to do that too, as best as we can. You know, sometimes you just got to get things done, you know, I got to churn through a lot of birds, you know, but No, I, I, I think that existed and, and it's definitely the same for us. But yeah, I mean, what you're describing in a way is the difference between a horticultural and an agricultural society, you know?

Yeah.

Toby Hemingway, you know, wrote about that kind of stuff, you know?

Yeah. Well, it's kind of like I was just thinking through, you know, we're, we're on this journey because, oh, we want to eat more organic or, or regenerative or holistic, natural. But really, if you think about over time, is it really natural to captivate an animal and build a relationship and then harvest? I don't know.

Well, it is if you control it, you know, if you, if you, the way you're doing it, I, I think it's as natural as it can get.

Yeah.

Uh, but that's what I do like about wild game over, say, raised animals is that they're not even eating feed. You know, even with our— as much as I would like to be raising my animals 100% off my land, it's not quite there yet. Maybe it's two-thirds of the way there, but I've still got that feed in there a bit. And you can control that as best as you can, but at the same time, only so much. Whereas with wild game, it's 100% from the land. And I think there's something that's pretty compelling about that idea in general.

I hear you. I hear you. I don't know if I can do that here. I think you're so remote, but here we're surrounded by GMO corn.

I know.

And so, so we're killing GMO-fed deer. It's crazy.

I know. It's true. It's true. And that's— yeah, that's part of the reason why we decided to live as remote as we are. And, you know, we're not that remote, but compared to you in North Carolina, significantly, you know, 100 to 1 difference.

Yeah.

So, but that also presents challenges too in the off-grid way. You know, it's harder for me to get resources. Yeah, I got to drive further to get stuff. You know, Amazon doesn't deliver to my door. You know, I have things like that. But at the same time, I like that. I grew up in the bush. You know, I grew up as my— in my 20s, I did tree planting. That was a, you know, very Canadian job. I go and plant trees in the bush in clearcuts. I planted over a million trees with my hands.

And yeah.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it takes— sometimes you're planting a tree in 2 seconds, you know, you're cranking it. I'd plant thousands a day. But yeah, we're in the bush and I like that. That's how I grew up. My, you know, my early adulthood and teenage years was in the bush. And there's something that's just comforting to me about it.

Well, a lot of, a lot of people know you as the suburban gardener. Yeah, urban gardener.

I know. So how—

why did you— why did you— so, so, so for people to get perspective and where we're going with the stories, like, you were, uh, in the bush, grew up in the bush, planting a million trees. Suburbia. What happened? Why did you move to town?

Yeah, well, you're going to end up back.

It's a full circle.

Well, you, you know, the, the bush— the bush work was a day job for me. I did that to put myself is that, that, that funded my music career for 10 years. So for 10 years of my life, I was completely dedicated to building a career. I mean, in a way, like, you had a totally different thing before you got into being Justin Rhodes. You had the mountain boarding thing, right? So my, my thing was I was, I was trying to make a career out of being a full-time musician, and, and I was going at that in a couple different ways. One was I was just gigging, was playing gigs for money. Uh, I played in a band and that was kind of my passion project, but then I was trying to build a career as a, a music, uh, film composer running scores.

Wow.

And I was really into the kind of contemporary classical music scene, I guess jazz as well. But, um, that's what I was doing. And tree planting paid for that because I wasn't making much money doing that. I was living in Montreal and, um, so I would go out west plant trees for 2 to 4 months a year, make a ton of money. I'd make, you know, 5, 6 times more dollars than anybody I knew in a very short period of time. And then it afforded me this great lifestyle in Montreal where I could just be a full-time musician available to play any gig anytime I was on the scene. You know, that involved some unhealthy aspects as well. But, you know, I started to really think about my food in 2008 going, man, society is unstable. And I witnessed one time in Montreal, a freezing rainstorm where the grocery store was literally empty. And there was a short period, about 2 or 3 days where people were really starting to panic and get unsettled. And that's what kind of woke me up to the importance of food. And then I started buying, you know, Bill Mollison, Jeff Lawton, and David Holmgren and Michael Reynolds and the Human Handbook with Joseph Jenkins. I just went down the rabbit hole to stuff. That inspired me to get into farming. But the reason I became an urban farmer, which was to your question, was I had no means to get on land. I wanted to do it in British Columbia. Land is so expensive out here still. And I thought, well, this urban farming thing, I heard about a guy in Saskatoon, Canada doing it. I could do that. I'm a hard worker. I, I, you know, tree planting is hard work. It was a real test of my, my ability to work hard in, in unforgivable circumstances. And so I thought, let's do this urban farming thing because I could just start. People will lend me their backyards and boom. So it was a way for me just to get into something and leverage my sort of experiential and social capital to a financial capital means at that time.

Yeah. And then what year was that?

That would've— I started the farm in 2009, fall of 2009, and then I had it ready for selling crops early 2010.

So you cranked it out and, um, from 2009 to when I came and saw you in 2017, I think I met you at a Permaculture Voices conference. That's right. Uh, yeah. And I think I had your contact or something and arranged to come see you. We were sick as dogs.

You were. You guys were all down and out. I do remember. Yeah.

I don't think I've ever been so sick in my life. And, uh, I remember filming one of those days. I was even still feeling down, uh, but the video took off. It ended up being a popular video.

It went great. Totally.

Okay, so when we were there, I don't know if you were thinking about the Wild Mountains then, but it did seem like you were kind of on the verge of a transition, maybe. You at least found a couple of business guys that now you're still in relationship with, I think. And then, um, so tell me what happened from there. You know, I'm visiting the Urban Gardener. That happened.

Well, so, you know, 2017, you were there. I was still cranking, doing the business full-time. Also, you know, starting to make a living doing YouTube content and stuff like that. My book had been out for a year at that point. Um, 2018, I officially closed the farm because my, my other side of the career uh, took off. But, um, and I was still homesteading in that urban place. Uh, I renovated it and put a lot more into it after you'd left. Um, but when COVID happened, I just realized, you know, it was about 6 months into those lockdowns— no, it was less than that, it was, it was a couple months into those lockdowns that I realized we don't want to live in the city anymore.

This is—

all our neighbors are becoming paranoid and You know, we don't take vaccines and stuff like that. So I was just— I was— this is not looking good. You know, the world— I'm a very social guy. I know all my neighbors. I'm friends with everybody. And I just saw people go paranoid and crazy. And I'm— and I said, I don't want my— because we just had our son at that point, our second child. And, uh, we're like, no, we don't want this kind of lifestyle for our kids. We don't want to see us getting into arguments with people about masks and all this. So we started looking really aggressively, and that's spring of 2020. And then we found this place. I mean, I looked, Justin, I looked everywhere, man. I was— and that's this course that we'll talk about later is a big part of, of what I learned during that journey because I combed hundreds of properties. I visited at least, I don't know, 20 or 30. And I learned a lot about looking for properties, as I did in my consulting and farming practice for years too. But, but so that's kind of where the journey off-grid began. So we've, we we, we scoured all over the province. We knew we wanted to stay in BC, though we could have moved to other places. We had the option. I make a living online, you know, we could have gone to Mexico or moved to the US even. We wanted to stay here. So we found this place in southern BC. It was totally over or undervalued because it was off-grid. It didn't have a consistent form of water that was reliable, and it had a challenging access, a kilometer-long driveway, you know, that's a sixth of a mile that goes up about 200 feet of elevation. And I liked all of those things. And so I got this property as a, as a steal of a deal because nobody else saw the value in it. But the thing is, I could tell right away that there was water there. It just needed to be found. It wasn't that I could— I flew my drone up, looked at the topography. I was like, yeah, this place is, is a gem because we get so much snow here. We can capture snowmelt. So even if I wasn't able to drill a well, which I did since then anyways, I would be able to capture 10 million liters of water from snowmelt a year easily. And that's what I'm doing now because I've got two ponds here. There's been a whole 3-year journey on this, this property. But, uh, go ahead.

Was, uh, when you say you were locked down in, in Canada, I've heard it was pretty strict. What did that look like for you in that, in town?

Well, you know, it wasn't as bad as maybe the news made it seem. But, um, it was unpleasant. Um, we weren't enforced or forced to do anything against our will, nothing like that. It was just that every time we went to the grocery store— and we, we refused to wear masks, uh, and my wife never wore one, my children never wore them ever, still have not. Um, and there were times where, because I was building and doing construction at the time, you know, a year after we bought this place, I would go into these hardware stores and they wouldn't let me in without wearing a mask. So what I would do is just put my shirt up like this. But it was stupid. You have to go through the motions and play this dumb game. And then you get people— and it was rarely ever the business or the government or police or anything like that. It was other people that were so brainwashed to be so afraid of this virus, alleged virus, that they would freak out on you. And, and I had multiple times where I was out with my kids and my wife and people would get in my face, especially because I'm the man. They would get in my face and it got Oh my gosh. Yeah, it was terrible. And I'm so glad that that phase of time is over.

Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. So I won't, I won't dwell on it too long, but you know, I, I, I figured out how to, uh, I saw, I saw a guy, uh, in Lowe's. This is how you, if you don't want to be bothered, I don't know if you can legally do this in Canada, but we went to Lowe's and here's this guy, he's barefoot, he's got a pistol on his side and he's got no mask. I mean, you don't go and tell that guy to put on a mask.

I love that. He was open. Yeah.

Yeah.

We don't have open carry. Open carry in Canada, but we, we do have, you can, you can have guns in Canada, no problem. We don't have open carry like some of the states down there. But no, I mean, we, we did it in our own ways. I mean, yeah, I've learned a lot about the law over the years, especially during COVID And okay, we were, we did whatever we wanted. You know, the, the remedies were right in the statutes and the mask mandate, Article 4, clearly says, you know, you, you, if you have a medical reason, you don't have to wear a mask. And it doesn't say anything about what that medical reason is. It just says it. And yeah, I got a medical reason. I need to breathe air. And so, yeah, you don't have to justify to anybody. So all these fines they handed out, they all got turned back. It was all a bunch of BS, you know. None of it stood up in the courts. And it's the same thing with all the latest stuff they're trying. It's just a bunch of BS.

Uh, why— I'm curious as to why you felt at this moment we could go anywhere. You had mentioned Mexico, America. Canada. What are you rooted in? Canada? Is that like, are born, raised, going to be buried there?

Born, raised? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For it. Yeah.

In BC too. I mean, I love the landscape. I'm adapted to it. I know the flora and fauna. You know, I feel like if I was going to survive in the bush, like, say, just total Bushman style, this would be my best place to do it. If I were just to be thrown down in North Carolina where you are, I don't understand the animals. I don't understand the migratory patterns of things. I don't, you know, here, I understand it. So there was that, but also it's kind of like, uh, the devil you know versus the devil you don't. And so the government's the devil, and, you know, I'm a free— I'm a free enterprise, free market kind of guy, you know, much in the kin of Joel Salatin and whatnot. And so I, I prefer the devil I know, and I understand the devil here. And, uh, Canada is a great place to actually be free if you understand it. And, you know, it's, we love it here. Yeah, we could, I could have gone anywhere. I could have gone to the US 'cause I had obviously businesses running there for years, still do. And I've thought about it and I, and I think maybe at some point I might, if I, if I do well enough for myself, I might buy a little place down in Arkansas or Tennessee and go down there 6 months of the year and then come back up here. You know what I mean?

Would that be to just come and, and be warm?

Maybe, you know, probably a bit of both. I mean, I always mix business and pleasure and, you know, I like doing business and I like traveling, but I really like homestead real estate. You know, it's a really— it's a thing I've become passionate about. And I think at some point I'd like to get to a place where I'm actually just developing homesteads and then selling them.

Okay.

Doing all the earthworks, putting in buildings or upgrading the buildings. Making the properties off-grid, put in the food systems, water systems, you know, all that stuff, and basically sell a turnkey solution for people. Sorry, an agrarian bunker, if you will, as you know, Joel Salatin puts it, and do something like that because I enjoy it. I mean, now I'm 3 years on this build as a general contractor. I'm going, man, I want to do this again because then I could get it better. I could do it right. And the builder that I've had up here for the last little while, he's been amazing. He's, he's built probably 60 homes, um, almost entirely himself. And, uh, he's built 4 for himself. He just built the 4th one, and he says to me— and he just finished it— he said— and he's living in it now— he said, uh, if I were to do it again tomorrow, I'd finally get it perfect. So 5 homes to get it perfect. So I think what I'd like to do is build at least 5 homesteads, and then maybe on that 5th one, get it completely perfect, and then that might be the one that I keep.

Where are you going to do that at? Oh, yo. So you would actually go and live in these for a little while?

All over. I'd love to do it. Absolutely. I'd love to go down to Arkansas, spend, you know, a year and then kind of commute back and forth a bit here and there, but get the contractor set up, build the property, and then enjoy it for a little while, then flip it, then move to the next one, and then just kind of keep adding value. I'd love to do that.

That's a good idea. Rebecca and I have thought about that. We were— we would be like, Honey, you do the, the house, the design, and I'll do the outside permaculture setup. I found around here though, we, we, we, a property came available and we were like, okay, let's go see what it would, you know, we were kind of thinking in that mindset of like something close to our house, but it was like, I want to say, uh, 10 acres, maybe $600,000. Yeah, but you're— I think you're probably looking in the right places, at least with East Tennessee. I don't know what the pricing is. Why did you— I should say this because we're probably going to have a lot of people listening from the United States and you've done a lot of research. Why did you pick Arkansas and Tennessee?

Well, I would even say Arkansas above Tennessee.

Okay. Why?

Why do you— well, supply and demand for the most part. So Tennessee is a great state. If I, if I could pick one state I'd want to be in, probably up against the Blue Ridge Mountains sort of thing on the, on the eastern side of Tennessee. Love, love that landscape. Love the topography. Love the flora and fauna. Love the people. I love the South. And but a lot of people during COVID from California moved to Tennessee. And the prices have gone to the roof. North Carolina too, forget about it. I mean, I don't even—

oh yeah, Western North Carolina, no, forget about it.

It's, it's, it's way too overinflated. However, the Ozark— I'm— this is, this is valuable information for folks. The Ozark region, uh, from call it, um, southeastern Missouri, there's that sliver that goes down through Arkansas. Northeastern Arkansas is some of the most premium homestead real estate in the US right now. It— value, climate, topography, soil, water, um, unbelievable what you can get in that region.

And we—

and so we showcase, and I look at hundreds of listings every single week. Our, you know, Freedom Farmers— now we do this new thing called the Homestead Accelerator. And it came out of this course that I built called Finding the Perfect Homestead Property, which basically teaches people my process using the 11 scales of permanence, which you're probably familiar with. Eric Townsmere and— came out of P.A. Yeomans' 8 scales of permanence. They added 11. And so we use that as a full spectrum analysis, look at property. And so I built this course teaching people how to do this. And then a lot of people reach out to me and be like, hey, why don't you guys just publish Listings in a directory. And so we started doing it, and it's really cool because the research, the information is amazing, but also just really getting a deep understanding of the United States topography is, is just fascinating for me. And, and I love it. I'm obsessed with it now, and I'm obsessed with that region— Missouri, Arkansas, parts of Tennessee. Um, you can even get into Alabama and Mississippi, also really great properties as well, if you can handle the humidity. And so that's what I kind of like about going a little bit further north, that northeastern or northwestern— sorry, northwestern Arkansas into Missouri is just a golden zone. And yeah, if I had to pick one place right now, that's where it would be, because just mostly because of the value. Sure, I'd get Tennessee, but Tennessee is getting harder to find good properties in and a good size. I like large acreage. I like 40 acres, 20 acres minimum. Depending on the topography. But I really like 40+ and even 100 acres. Like, we're finding 100-acre lots in Arkansas that you could split up into 3 subdivides and do really well on. Like, $400,000 for 100 acres, prime land, sometimes even with a house on it in Arkansas. Yeah, yeah. And parts of Missouri too. Missouri is amazing. And I like the culture of Missouri too, you know. I like the open carry. I like, I like the real freedom-minded people.

You know, they almost pay you to be there. The taxes are so low. Now, I was on the farm tour there and I was riding around with the guy, and I'm used to like North Carolina here in western North Carolina. Nobody's from here. Everybody's from somewhere else. We vacation in Florida. Nobody's from Florida. Everybody's from somewhere else. Rebecca's from Florida, but it's rare that you find somebody. And so I was asking this Missouri guy, and that was the way it was in a lot of places, Texas, Maine, whatever. And I said to him, I said, well, where are you from? And he looked at me and said, Justin, nobody moves to Missouri. But I'm telling people it's an underrated homestead state because of its freedom and its tax rate. But it gets so hot and it gets so cold. But I mean, you gotta just get some air conditioning and some heat and you'd be all right. Right.

Although for me, that's, that's nothing. The, the, the variance in hot and cold in that climate for me is not compared to what we deal with up here in the boreal climates. Nothing like it at all.

What do you deal with up there?

Well, in the boreal region, you go from really cold winter and tons of snow to hot and dry summers. Whereas in the temperate regions, which is which you're in, that most Missouri is in, it's, it's the swing in temperatures is way less, but you have swings in humidity. And humidity is often what makes things sort of unbearable. When you think about a Missouri summer or a North Carolina summer, it's that humidity, right? Is the, the temperature is not that hot, but when you get into like 90 plus humidity, it's unbearable. And then, yeah, but like you said, air conditioning and, you know, a good wood stove can, can do.

Well, we should talk about air conditioning. Can you do— I almost felt like, wait, should I say air conditioning? Can you do air conditioning off-grid?

Absolutely. I mean, off— for us, off-grid, you know, we have 20 kilowatts of solar, and any extra thing to spend electricity on in the summer is nothing because we, oh, we have so much excess electricity in the summer. It's the winter, you know, it's the winter where I'm not dedicating any kilowatt hours towards climate control. So in the winter, we're all wood, 100% wood, propane as a backup. But yeah, it's all wood up here, which is amazing because I've got 30 acres of standing timber that I can manage for my entire life. And my children will— if we're, if we're good stewards on the land here, which we intend to be, my children will be doing the same thing and we'll be able to harvest trees from this forest forever and only make it better as a result. Because as you know, you probably know this, but most forests in North America are too dense and it's good land stewardship to thin them because it reduces your fire risk. It increases the mobility through the forest so that I can go through, animals can go through. We can build, we can, we can help foster good soil health in the forest by animals, right? As you know, bringing, bringing pigs through there, bringing goats through there, sheep. And so the more we can, you know, horticulturally manage our forests, the better they're going to be, the more fire resilient they're going to be. And that's the thing we have to deal with in the boreal climates is softwood trees burn and they're intended to burn. And that's part of the natural cycle. But good management can, can, can help with that.

Yeah. And what I hear here is You're there. You're, you're talking about your children being there and being on the land. Is that in your heart? Are you going to be buried there? I mean, in this—

probably. I, I think I'd rather be— well, yeah, no, I would be buried here, actually, now that you think about it, because there's some pretty neat legal stuff you get when you bury somebody on your property. You get some, uh—

oh, really?

Some good— yeah, some good property protections from that. I've heard that.

Yeah, I would ask you, one, is it legal? Because it's not always legal, I don't think. I don't know.

Yeah, what's legal and what's lawful don't always align. And, and sometimes, most of the time, what's lawful is what's right, and what's legal is often wrong. But the devil's in the details, as they say. So those kinds of things don't intimidate me. I've learned enough about Canadian law now that, you know, I can pretty much look at most of it and just see how it's so full of holes and BS that there's usually a remedy for everything, as long as you're in the right standing, and as long as you're in honor and you're, you're doing things properly, um, we can kind of live as we want, as we're intended to be, you know?

Yeah.

I don't want to open a can of worms on that conversation though, but I know we, we could go down there if we need to, won't we?

Did, did, um, what I'm getting at there is you're— I'll ask people that, and mostly people are I don't want to say flighty, but they're not necessarily committed.

Yeah.

To their death. They're not settled.

Yeah.

It's kind of rare, to tell you the truth, because at least when I was at homesteading events and people would come through the line, where are you from? And then I would, you know, then say, are you going to be buried there? And there people are almost thrown off. Maybe they're thinking like, you know, what I'm trying to say is, are you going to live there till the end?

Yeah, I think so.

I know if you're talking about Arkansas, you're talking about, um, East Tennessee, but those feels like— those are more business adventures for you, I would imagine, right?

Yeah, I think so. My heart, my heart is in this climate. I love the winter too. We're big ski and snowboarders and stuff, and so we really thrive in the winter and we really enjoy it. And so I think at this point we're kind of getting a little sick of it. We got a little bit of snow coming in right now. But that's inevitable, you know. But I do enjoy the 4 seasons. I really do.

Okay.

And it, because it's, it's a, it's a new 4 times a year, you know, it feels like a new thing. Whereas in temperate climates, it's kind of 2 times a year. It's like there's summer and there's winter, you know. And yeah, winter is like just a wet period and, and summer is your hot and humid period. So it's, it's different up here and I like that.

Yeah, I was scrolling through your your sales page. Where is this, by the way? Your, your course, is it on Freedom Farmers or is it somewhere else?

Yep.

Okay.

Freedomfarmers.com. Yep.

So that's what I was looking at then. I was looking at freedomfarmers.com. I was looking at this course. And one thing you address in this course is the— it's lonely. And yeah, so homesteading is lonely, but then you take homesteading to another level and you go off-grid and you said you don't even get— Amazon won't even deliver there.

No, but I can still get Amazon stuff. I just have to pick it up at, like, our rural post office or our rural post box. Yeah. But I wanted that, Justin, because, you know, you've experienced a bit of this too yourself. Like, you know, we're semi-famous people, and I get recognized everywhere I go, literally everywhere I go, especially in the United States. Like, it's in Canada. I still do. I can't even go out to the hardware store in my little town. And not have people recognize me. So I had for many years, uh, even though was doing the urban farming thing, um, you know, right downtown, and people would literally from around the world would just knock on my door. And so yeah, it got a little, it got a little annoying. As much as I'm grateful that people are, you know, they want to meet me and they, they value my content, of course, but I just, I really valued privacy. And so we wanted to live really tucked away and, and not— we're not isolated because we have a lot of community around us and we've got friends everywhere.

We were talking about folks coming by uninvited. Yes. It's interesting. We, me and my tech guy were talking about that last night. It's called— I didn't know there was a name for it, but it's called parasocial relationship. They know you and have a sense of you.

Yes.

But you don't know them, and they really do have a relationship with you, and they know you, what you're presenting as truth. And oftentimes you're sharing some real, you know, I've seen some of your stuff, you sharing some real, you know, stuff from conviction. And so they, they, they, they connect with that, and you're being vulnerable, and they connect with that, and Um, they know you, but you don't know them.

And you know what, you know what, the thing that kind of was the straw that broke the camel's back with that is, yeah, as you said, these parasocial relationships is the thing that got weird and a little creepy and was a big part of we need to get out of the city and get, you know, and I wanted to have a— this, this all came from us talking about having a really inaccessible driveway and have a, you know, being kind of really tucked out. The way, uh, is that I made the mistake early on of having my baby in my videos, and people were really having these parasocial relationships with my child. And then that's just where I didn't, I didn't feel comfortable. And, and, and Katie, as the mama bear, didn't like that. And it was— and so that's when you're like, okay, yeah, if we have a property, we're going to have a property that's you know, you can't just slide by my place. Like, my driveway is on a, on a real back road, and you wouldn't even recognize it from the base of it because there's— it goes up into a forest and it looks like nothing. And so that's how I wanted it. And, you know, at the same time, bringing this back to where we were talking about properties and whatnot, is that, that, that was valuable to me but probably not valuable to somebody else. And so I got a crazy deal on this property because I saw things in it that were valuable to me but not someone else. So the off-grid thing I wanted, I wanted to do that anyways. A challenge with water, I wanted that challenge, you know. I wanted to be able to drill a well or build ponds and do that kind of stuff, do the real permaculture stuff, the earthworks, you know, getting the snowmelt into the riparian areas and into the ponds. And then I wanted the privacy. And yes, my driveway has cost me almost $100,000 at this point, but I like that. I like that privacy.

And you see any neighbors from your place?

No, I can see part of one of their properties, but it's a part of their property that they don't live on. And so, no, it's complete privacy. I mean, we can literally— I mean, it's not that we do, but we could naked garden every single day and we don't have to answer to anybody. You know, we don't have people driving by, lookie-loos. And I like that. You know, it's also really nice for peace of mind to just being able to totally relax and just feel like you're in your own space. And it's, it's a magical thing, especially with kids, you know, and being able to feel safe with them walking around. And yeah, we've got wild animals out here, but we've got a big fence. We, I, we put a big 2,400-foot linear foot of fence in with electrical wire on the top and bottom of it so bears can't climb it. And, you know, we've got that, uh, that security, and it's really nice.

Is Katie on board with this 100%?

Totally. She, she waxes and wanes, as, uh, you know, sometimes, you know, it was my vision, you know, um, but she trusted me and she wanted to be part of the journey. She loves— she, she, you know, even though she was an urbanite, you know, she lived in Vancouver for most of her adult life until we got together in 2014, um, She liked the health aspect though, and us being able to control as much of our, call it holistic context as possible. She really liked that. And she, we're big into homeschooling and unschooling and all that. And so she's really big into having the forest as being the teacher and our, and our kids really learn in the forest. And my daughter's an expert mushroom, mushroom picker. She can find anything. And my boy's a lot younger, so he's, he's finding, finding his way. But yeah, we love that about this place.

What's the pain point for somebody who's— what is, what is the, what is the pain point that you're seeing people having to overcome or people getting burnt out?

Yeah, well, that's it, dude. I mean, it's, it's burnout. We saw it after COVID, you know, from 2020 to 2022, there was a mad dash in real estate. And it was a really interesting time because that's kind of when I really got my feet wet with understanding the game better, understanding realtors. I talked to dozens of realtors and I'm the kind of guy who just calls people like I don't Google search things, I just call people. So, so I, I, that's how I've learned a lot of things over time and talking to so many people. And during that period, the realtors were calling them, calling us COVID buyers. So there's all these people getting out of the cities and trying to buy properties and doing the off-grid thing. And so there was a mad dash to do that during that time, and a lot of people are selling those properties now. And so, and I even see it in the US, you guys had the same thing all over, um, and some states worse than others. But I remember Washington State when we start— first started looking at properties up there, and northeastern Washington is a gold mine for topography, climate, it's beautiful, it's a warmer boreal climate, um, And we saw so many properties listed that you could tell it was a real just flying by the seat of their pants, off-grid, you know, cabins, RV pads, really DIY pit wells, real ad hoc, you know, off-grid solar systems and stuff like that. We saw for a lot of those properties sold now, and they sold at a steal of a deal. But a lot of properties we saw in northeastern Washington were unbelievable value, half houses and stuff like that. And so you're still seeing that. I think in Canada in particular, the real estate market's going to shake a lot of those people out. This— the beginning is this year because Canada, you know, mortgages are a scam already, but mortgages in Canada are a double scam because, you know, the bank made— printed the money out of nothing. You know, that's fractional reserve lending. You go and put a $50,000 deposit and then they can lend you back $500,000 and you pay the interest, and the money never existed until you put your money down. That's a mortgage. But in Canada, you got to renew the interest rate every 5 years. So if you, if you take a 25-year mortgage and they amortize it, they amortize the monthly payment based on the total years, but then you go in at this interest rate payment, and then that calculates the monthly payment you're going to make on your interest and principal for the next 5 years. But then in 5 years, it all comes up to renewal. So in 2019, beginning from 2019, 2020, and 2021, the most amount of homeowner purchases in Canadian history were made. Actually, it was 2019 in particular. It was like 68.9% of people who bought a home were a homeowner. So that means they're living in the home. So they bought a home at 1.7, sometimes is 1.4 interest rate. Now those interest rates are 6.5, 7%. So how's that going to change your monthly payment on a million dollar property? Because Canadian real estate is so overvalued, a million dollar property at 1.5, go and do a mortgage calculator and you can figure it out. And then you go to renew at almost triple the interest rate. You're talking double or more of a mortgage payment every month. And that's going to put a lot of people out of their homes, which is tragic and sad. But if you see it coming and you can start and prepare for that outcome, you might come out with a really good property for cheap. And a lot of people were just turn and burn in these.

What do you teach people to do then inside the course? What do they do if they're not going to get— are they getting— are you Having them get mortgages, or you find another way?

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, we— I don't touch finance as far as what I teach people, you know, that's up to them. But what I teach people in, in our Finding the Perfect Homestead Property course is how to evaluate property. So basically what we look at are 11 things. And so they're also known as the 11 scales of permanence. This is, you know, this is permaculture 101 in a way. But what we, what we do is we first teach people about understanding their context, because, you know, in permaculture, your context dictates everything. So that's your barometer of where you go. And then what we do is we teach them what to look for, for threats. So when you're looking for a property, the first thing you want to do is you want to make sure it's, it's the right property for you, like it, it, it meets the, the, the basic checklists of your negotiables and non-negotiables. But then the first thing you want to do is look for threats. Is there a CAFO a kilometer away? You know, is— what's the driveway look like? Um, are you downstream from a forestry clearcut? Um, is there a mine right around the corner? Is there oil and gas drilling that might compromise your well water? You know, a whole litany, litany of things we look for.

Power lines, cell phone towers.

Absolutely. Power lines, fracking, close cell towers, fracking. Exactly. Conventional large-scale ag. I mean, you know, this is why when I talk about Missouri, I'm not talking about the other part of Missouri that's brown and full of big ag fields. I'm talking about the parts in the trees. This is why I prefer rural properties. So there's, you know, land is divided into 4 categories typically. There's urban, suburban, peri-urban, and rural, right? And so when I was farming, it was suburban technically. I was the urban farmer, but I was technically suburban farming. And peri-urban is where most farms are. You know, you think about that whole strip along the Mississippi River on both sides in the US, it's full of big ag, right? It's— or you think about Central Valley, California, big ag. Don't live in big ag. Live higher elevation, closer to the end of the mountains, and where there's more trees. So that's what I encourage people to look for in general. And we showcase all kinds of different properties, but generally, like, when I'm talking about prepping and getting out of the way, you don't want to be in big ag country because it's full of risks. And so from there, once we've identified threats and we eliminate properties non-stop, we, we comb through 200 properties a week to produce 10 or 20. And those may make a shortlist, and then they get eliminated based on threats. And so FEMA regions are another threat, you know, hurricane, um, areas, Tornado Alley, tsunami areas, things like that. Um, then we go through the 11 scales of permanence, and we go in that order, and we look at, okay, what's the climate like? Are there risks in the climate? Is there high annual wind speed, right? Are there extremes on the temperature? Are there risks associated with climate? Because climate is the thing you can change the least, right? And then we look at the topography, the geography of the property, you know, then, then we look at the water, and then we analyze the socioeconomics. And those 4 things are the things that are the hardest to change, and so we kind of prioritize those. Then we go through and look at access and circulation, zones of use, soil, vegetation and wildlife, um, buildings and infrastructure, and aesthetics and experience. I think that gets us to our 11. And, and we basically evaluate through that full spectrum analysis and then, and then say, hey, yeah, this property meets those requirements because most people, when they're looking at real estate, all they're looking for is the house. You know, you could, you could have somebody who say watches your videos and they're like, yeah, I want to do the Justin Rhodes thing or I want to do a Curtis Stone thing. And they go to a property and the, the realtor just shows them the house, right? That's typically what realtors do. And they're mostly fixated on that. And then the property itself is kind of, okay, well, I want some fields and I want some of this, but they're not really thinking through the way that they would live on this property. So that, that's kind of what we do is we show them to analyze the full spectrum of it so that they can understand how they can fit into this. And really what, what— I'm sorry, this Keeps—

that's all right, go ahead.

I got notifications off now. There we go. Uh, shouldn't happen again. But what is the whole context, right? And so for us, buildings and infrastructure is way down the list. We're looking at climate, topography, water, socioeconomics way above that and value that more. And even on topography, we pull the lens back. We use Google Earth Pro. We pull the lens back 60 miles and we look at everything in that 60 miles. Are there any threats there? Are, are there any geographical features. You know, you could be down in the lower end of a, a water tributary that floods at certain times of the year. You could be in a delta. You know, we, we look at all those kinds of things and really bring this whole picture into, into place for people. And that my course teaches people how to do that basically. So you can go and learn it yourself cuz these skills translate very well to developing land as well. You know, as you probably know, you've traveled, you've seen farms all over the world. That really changes the perspective on how you operate at home.

Right?

You learn things and you go, yeah, do this or that. Yeah.

I'm thinking about, you know, what people are fa— what, what kind of person, uh, I'm, I'm thinking everybody should do this if they're, if they're leaving the city and going to the land. What I see is a lot of people are like exactly what you said. They really don't know. They really don't know. That one, that they should be looking for a certain type of thing, and then two, they don't know how to do— look for that kind of thing they should know they were looking for. Oh my gosh, I think I said that right.

Uh, well, no, exactly, exactly. And so what, what we do is we look at a whole— the whole map of North America, and we divide it up into 5 climate regions. Like, are you familiar with the Köppen-Geiger climate classification system? No. You heard of that? It's, it's, it's a fantastic way of understanding climate. So you probably, you, you know, you understand your USDA zones, right? You're probably a zone 8 or 7 down there.

7.

7. Yeah.

Yeah.

And down in, you know, northern Florida, Georgia, there'd be a zone 8, you know, get in central Florida zone 9 and then at the very tip you'd be a zone 10. And, and, and, but very little of the US is zone 10. But the US is very interesting 'cause it goes from a zone 3.

Yeah.

And even in some of the high mountainous regions, can be as low as zone 2 if you're like super high to zone 10. So the US is one of the most climate diverse places in the world as far as covering a full spectrum of cold climates to warm climates. But what the, the Köppen-Geiger climate classification system does is it groups the climates into 5 categories. So you've got Arctic, you've got boreal, which is, so Arctic is self-explanatory. Places that are winter pretty much most of the time. And then boreal, which is my climate, which are defined by cold winters with tons of precipitation, like snowy cold winters with hot dry summers. That's the boreal climates and varying degrees in there. Then the temperate climates, which is you, most of the southeastern United States from Pennsylvania, from, from central Pennsylvania down the Mississippi River all the way across to the east is all temperate and varying different degrees based on your USDA zones. But temperate climates are defined as, you know, humid, hot summers and wet, rainy winters really. And then you've got arid climates, which are the Montanas, Wyomings, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah. The arid climates are, can, can vary in their summers. They can have, you know, hot, it's always hot and dry summer, but the winter is either cold and dry or warm and dry. And then you've got your tropical climates, which are basically only divided into dry and wet. So you got your savanna tropics, which are much of like, say, Africa, Central Africa and the interior to the temperate or the, the, the wet tropics, which most of us are familiar with. If you've been to the coastal Mexico regions or, you know, Key West, Florida, Miami is, is that wet, humid tropics. And so we divide the climates into those regions, then we get a really good understanding of what it's like to live there. Because if you're, if you're moving from upstate New York and you want to go and buy a property in Tennessee, you don't really understand what that climate's like until you've experienced it on, in, on all sides of the year, because it's quite different. Like, you'll go down the winter and you're kind of like, well, this is kind of cool. It's like not a cold winter. It's a bit rainy, but it's mild out like this. But then you experience the summer and you're like, oh my goodness, August, get me out of here. And then, yeah, then you go up to Upstate New York, right?

Yeah. And I was joking you earlier about, well, you got air conditioning and heat, but you really do— as a homesteader, people need to realize they— you are going to spend a lot of time outside.

Oh yeah.

So you gotta, you gotta be ready. So do you help actually help people find stuff and all those climates, or are you steering people towards a certain climate? Okay.

No, we're, we're everywhere. Um, I would say we're mostly— we, we reflect what, um, what the— where the demand is, I should say. And the demand is in the Southeast in the United States, hands down. There's just the most amount of inventory. Well, just the East in general. Basically everything on the US east of the Mississippi all the way as north as Vermont and all the way down to Florida. Florida's difficult to find properties in. Yeah, there's just— well, that's where the, you know, 80% of the US population lives, east of the Mississippi, right? So I don't know if you knew that. And then, and then the other almost 20% live in Southern California. That's how the US is broken up. Very few people live in Montana, Arizona. I mean, Arizona, Phoenix is super dense, but the rest of Arizona is super sprawl, is super sparse. So, you know, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, even eastern Nebraska or western Nebraska, very few people live in those places like they are. There's nobody there. And so the inventory is low and the demand is low. So yes, we have, we have listings in our Homesite Accelerator on the entire U.S., pretty much in every state. However, the vast majority of our listings are just on the east because that's where people are and that's where there's more inventory, there's more infrastructure. It's the older part of the country, you know, so there's just more stuff. There's more roads, there's more everything.

Oh, so you've heard— if people didn't catch that, you have a— people can come and, and take this course on what to look for in land, but you actually also have listings.

Yeah, we have a directory. It's a, it's a pretty, it's a pretty insane, um, service we provide. Yeah, we used to charge a lot for it because it's valuable. I mean, Justin, I've been consulting for as long as I've known you and longer. And one thing that I used to do for people all the time is probably the thing I did the most amount of consulting is, is finding people farms or homesteads. And so, you know, that happened in a number of different ways. But mostly how it happened is because I'm not directly involved in the— I'm not involved in the sale of real estate, but I— but people would basically find properties and then send me like, say, 10 properties and say, hey, charge me by the hour and just do an analysis of these properties and tell me what you think. And so I did this. I've done this forever. And that was the, the inspiration for the course was like, man, this is about— I didn't realize how valuable this skill was until people started paying me for it. And then I thought about this kind of thing for years. And then, and then during, during the COVID panic, when I bought my property, I really realized, man, this is a valuable skill. I mean, I scored on this property because nobody else understood how to read the landscape and how to find this, this opportunity because most realtors just look at houses and fences and like, you know, roads and, and, and just like common infrastructure, but they don't look at topography, they don't look at trees, they don't look at water and all this kinds of things. So I realized that, yeah, we could build a course doing it. So we built that course, it's called Finding the Perfect Homestead Property. Um, and then later we built this directory where we were at first we were charging $400 US a month for this service and we would basically find properties on the open market for our clients. And so people would sign up to the program, they would fill out this onboarding data and they'd say, hey, I'm looking in eastern Tennessee, hey, I'm looking in eastern Texas or wherever. And then we would just queue up properties every single week and they got a ton of value. We had a lot of people that bought their dream homesteads because of that. And then so we found a way to make it cheaper by streamlining the process of trained people that understand it at say a lower level than me, but they can do the wide capture stuff and then the, all the con— the information filters down to me at the end and then that's when the final reviews go up. But yeah, we've found a way where we can publish and we have a directory. So people go onto freedomfarmers.com, they can see our directory. Well, you have to sign up, but that's kind of what, you know, we could offer your audience is like if they want to learn this course that I do, We normally sell this course for, what is it? I think it's like a thousand, close to a thousand bucks. And what we're offering, what we can offer you guys is that course for $347. So crazy, crazy cheap, but then we'll throw in 6 months of our Freedom Farmers Pro package, which gives you for free. So you'll pay the course, you get that course, it's yours. Okay. But then we'll, we'll give you 6 months of Freedom Farmers Pro for free. And if you want to renew it at 6 months, you can. And it's like an annual, it's an annual thing. I think we're only asking, it might be, it's less than $600, but basically it's, you get all of our courses, 20+ courses covering a huge section of stuff with homesteading, regenerative agriculture, market gardening, microgreens farming, you name it. Plus our Homestead Accelerator directory. So it's insane value for $347. Somebody can take this course, learn the whole process, and then also just check out our listings every single week that we publish all over the US.

Yeah. What do you think? That's, that's, that's invaluable. What do you think? Somebody listening to this that, um, it's just getting started and it all— I almost hesitate to say that because there was this huge movement in 2020 and now we have what I call COVID gardens, abandoned gardens or whatever you were saying. People are, are leaving now the rural homestead. So what's up with that? And what, what I feel like people are that was a fear-based decision and they ran out of adrenaline, so to speak, and you collapsed. And you got to have a bigger why. What is the why that you sense in people in your target market and somebody who's right for this?

Okay, that's easy, Justin. It's because the throttles of tyranny were dialed back and everybody all of a sudden went, oh, there's no longer a rush to get on the land because there aren't lockdowns and there aren't mask mandates at the stores and there isn't the government saying that you're going to need to take a vaccine to keep your job or whatever it is. That's why. And it's a huge mistake.

It's a huge mistake.

Um, absolutely. People, don't, don't stop because this tyranny that, that, this tyranny that we witnessed was just the, the appetizer. This was just the introduction to a long haul. And I, you know, I've been reading UN documents and World Economic Forum documents for a long time. I'm almost 20 years on my awakening with this stuff, um, and it certainly accelerated in 2014 and, you know, 2016 and then 2020. But, um, these people, they, they want, they want the end of the idea of America, right? They want the end of the idea of freedom. They don't just want you know, eliminate the Constitution and all that kind of stuff. But they want the culturally— the idea of freedom to be gone. That's where you hear all these clichés of you'll own nothing and be happy, you know, you're going to eat the bugs and all this stuff. They want the average person— and when I say they, I'm just talking about the, the big operators and the NGOs and, and the, you know, corporate governance of the UN and the World Economic Forum and these kind of groups, Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission. These internationalist globalist groups, they want everybody renting everything for their entire life. They want you living in a pod in a tiny little apartment. And I'm not saying this to fearmonger, I'm just saying that this is what they're telling you. And, um, if you don't want that, you got to get out of the city. You got to get out of the, the really, um, high-dense areas that are really liberal. Because this crazy liberal politics, um, look what— look, all the places that had, say, drag queen story time before COVID how did those places do during COVID Those are the places that the most, most insane people screaming at you for not wearing a mask, freaking out because you're a foot too close to them, right? That— those attitudes didn't go away. There's, there's still people out there wearing masks. I still see people driving cars wearing a mask by themselves. And so these things aren't going away. They, they made a cultural impression during that period. It's not going to go away. So I think it was a mistake for people to leave. I understand why they did, but, um, I, I think you got to stay the course if you're going to get into homesteading and do this. You gotta go through the good times and the bad times, you know. It's like I said, in market farming, you can make money in good times and you can make that money in bad times. So it's all good.

What is the biggest mistake people are going to make doing this, going off-grid, getting a piece of land in the— in, in the world? What, what, yeah, what can we tell people who are listening who are wanting to— hey, yeah, I'm listening to Curtis, I'm gonna do this good times or bad, this is a good decision for me no matter what, um, no matter what the future is, I want a legacy for my children, I want to protect them. What do they, what do they do wrong that that's going to lead them to, to a burnout and, uh, quitting down the road?

Yeah.

Or, or being too difficult? What do they do wrong initially in getting this property?

Or in their number one thing that— well, well, there's the— that— well, that's a whole thing too, man. Uh, I mean, we can get into mindset, but, but what I'll tell you on as far as property is concerned is You know that on a homestead there's certain chores that need to be done every single day, right?

Yeah.

And the way you do those chores is very important because if, if the— if you— when you do those chores, day— I call it my chore path, the path that I walk out of my house to do the chicken chores, um, whatever it is, irrigation things in the summer, moving animals around, whatever it is, that, that chore path is a very important path that you take and you walk on sometimes 100 times a day back and forth. And so what people often fail on is they don't understand the homestead property in the whole context. Like, you understand permaculture and thinking about the early works of Bill Mollison and the big— in the big designer's manual talking about that homestead in your zone 1, 2, and 3, right? And even going into the zone 4, that's a thing too for larger acreages like mine. But people don't think about the way things are laid out on the homestead, and they often make critical decisions early on that— and you talked about legacy— is that if you buy the wrong place and there's just one or two things that are just, ah, if you would have saw that, it would have saved you so much wasting time because your chore path is inefficient, for example, or there was one critical design feature in a building put in a way that just didn't make any sense, or the driveway goes around this and not this way, or there's so many things, um, is that when people don't see that, that's where they make mistakes. And then they buy this property, and now you got it, okay? So you realize a year into having this property that, you know, after some hard conversations with your wife and children and family and friends, you're just realizing we bought the wrong place. Now a whole world of hurt is in front of you where, okay, now you're going to sell the property or are you going to do some critical things to change some of the things that could have been dealt with at the beginning by just not getting that property? Now you got a whole world of hurt in front of you. Or the other way is you learn the techniques, you understand what to look for, you don't make the mistakes, you buy the right property. Your chore path is on track. Everything that you needed is there. You got a nice shop with high ceilings. You got a barn for those animals. You got a half-decent house that's livable. You got some good road infrastructure. You got some good water infrastructure here. Now you're talking about legacy where that chore path that you have to do every single day is now 10 times easier than it could have been if you made the wrong decision.

Yeah.

So that's kind of, you know, that's broad because we could drill down into any of those thoughts and, and where people mess up. But that's where people mess up all the time is they just, they bought the the wrong property. And I, I, it, it, it tears my heart to tell people, but I have. I, I tell people in my private consulting, I always say like, hey, um, I'm just going to tell you the straight goods. I'm, I'm not going to sugarcoat things. And, and, you know, that's what we try to do at the Homestead Accelerator is basically eliminate that need to hire me as a consultant because that's expensive, and then teach you the techniques. And then better yet, give you examples because all learning this stuff is all about repetition. So in the, in the Finding the Perfect Homestead Property course, I teach you this method going through your context, threats, negotiables and non-negotiables, then the 11 scales of permanence. Then we go and review 52 properties in every single USDA climate zone in the United States. Okay, 52 properties where we do a full review, videos showing you the property on Google Earth. This is where the water moves here. This is what's going to happen here. Oh, there's a, there's a cut block up here. If you don't—

if you—

if something— if that water were to slide down your property, it could do this. Like doing a full analysis. And I even— in that course, we even show bad properties. So we look at good, really good properties, which we call A-grade. We look at B properties that need a bit of work, but they could be good. And then C properties, which could be good with a ton of work, or we just show you total failures. And we spend a lot of time in that course showing you the wrong stuff so that you know what to look for if you don't want to make those mistakes. And then in the directory, in the Homestead Accelerator directories, we just show you properties that are winners, whether they're A, B, or C, they're all winners. They all have the fundamentals of food, water, energy, shelter to get, to get on that property and make it happen.

Where are you sourcing those properties that are, that are on point? Do you have somebody scaling the, the real estate?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And Lincoln, 3 people working on it full time.

Okay. Yeah.

So we, we scour everything. So we scour Realtor.com, Redfin, Zillow, everywhere. We're on all the public real estate main internet or national directories, I should say. But we also offer— we let realtors post or people who are just selling their place privately. We just charge a small fee and people can list their property in our directory as well. So we have a number of members who are selling, you know, the family homestead and they don't want a realtor. And so they just come to us and we don't make any money on the deal. We just charge a fee and then they list it. So that's, that's where we get our properties.

Okay. Well, tell me then what the, the mindset mistake is then, if that's the physical mistake of getting something that can't be designed well and have a good chore path. What's the What's the mindset mistake?

Well, the mindset mistake is not being prepared to roll with the punches. That's the number one thing I see is that people— and like you said, with COVID gardens, you know, um, people romanticize homesteading because they watch your videos or they watch my videos and they just see the stuff that we're showing them. Right? There's obviously a lot of other stuff that's not nice to show, right? There's all those jobs that nobody wants to do, right? That you and I as dads, we're probably the ones that do those jobs, you know, the really gross jobs that nobody else wants to do, the, the, the, the problem solving, you know. Oh, this irrigation line blew out. Now I emptied my cisterns. Now what am I going to do? You know, all those kinds of things. People don't, um, they're not ready for that sort of warrior mindset that's required. Where you basically have to just— you're outside, it's pouring rain, you're cold, but this thing that you have to do has to get done. And if it doesn't get done, you're going to be in trouble. Your wife is not happy, right? Or something like that, right? However it's going to go. Or it's something, you know, serious. You know, this dam is leaking, I got to fix this dam. Uh, whatever it could be, is that if you don't have that mindset of being ready to just get out there and tough it out, You're not gonna last. And, and, and for me, that's that. I, I learned that at an early, a young age, cuz I was, because of tree planting, because of my Canadian bush experience of just getting out in the bush. And we had to plant trees at just above freezing temperatures, downpour torrential rain, climbing up and over slash piles all day, wet, wet hands, cold, like very inhospitable conditions. And I learned— that's how I learned how to work. And so I learned the hard way, but which was the good way, is that if a job needs to get done, it's got to get done. It doesn't matter what the weather is. And so, but that's homesteading. And of course, you want to— you want to, as you develop your homestead, you want to include systems that make it easier. But there's going to be a period of time when you're frontloading the beginning of it, that, that hard work needs to be done, right? And that's, that's common in even permaculture dialectics of just frontloading the water system so that for the next 30 years, the property moves water in the way that you want so that you get that benefit of that water for those 30 years. This is where good design compounds into that legacy idea of now your children and your grandchildren are taking this land and doing something better with it.

Yeah, for sure. What would you say, um, well, I should say this, the, when, when I took my permaculture design certificate, I got it from Geoff Lawton in Australia. He, um, I remember going there and with the mindset of, you know, how am I going to design my own place that already exists? And I'm learning where the house should go and I'm like, oh crap, You know, it's, it's the typical, just where is it oriented to the road? And they paid no attention to where the sun patterns are. They paid no attention that the house was built in the frost pocket, uh, only 50 feet away from the public road. Um, all kinds of things that, like you said, if even if we were gonna check it all and, and move and list it, the realtor Wouldn't touch on it. Wouldn't. This is kind of a shame too. And maybe we're going a different route with this, but it's kind of like they don't value the same things we value.

No.

You know, I would, I would put the house above the frost pocket. I would have the living areas towards the south and the sleeping areas towards the north. And I definitely wouldn't put it on the view and on the top of the mountain. you know, keep that sacred and keep not be exposed up there. And, uh, but you know, if you were, if, if you look at a listing, they're wanting to romanticize the view and you might look at that and you might not have any kind of place where you could put a garden without having some kind of mega, uh, trellis, not trellis, terrace.

Terrace. Exactly. Yeah. And that's You know, the thing is, too, is realtors really are a tough bag of people. Like, they're—

they're—

if you ever want to be depressed, you know, meet a bunch of realtors. And, you know, I love— some of my best friends are realtors. It's not— this is not a dig on realtors. It's a dig on, say, 90% of realtors, because most people get into real estate because it's an easy thing to do. Like, it's I'm actually doing my real estate license because it's something I've always wanted to do, or for a long time. But, but it's easy to do. You take— you sign up for this course for a couple of months and then you write a test. And the test is like English proficiency. It's a nothing burger. And so a lot of people can get into real estate because it's easy to get into. But a good realtor will tell you that 90% of the deals are done by 10% of the realtors and 10% of the deals are done by 90% of the realtors. So there's, there's a bunch of realtors out there who just don't really care. They do it because it's easy, easy money. They only need to do 5 deals a year to make $50,000 to $100,000 depending on their market, and they just don't really care and they're not passionate about it. And so it's when it comes to homesteads, it's really hard to find realtors that are good. And the other thing that's tough about in the realtor's defense The thing that's tough about showing homestead properties is you got to drive, right? You want to go look at some— say you're in, you're in Asheville and you want to move to Asheville and you want to go and look at properties all around. This one buyer, he's driving around hours and hours to show you properties and not making any money for it until the deal's closed. So a lot of realtors gravitate away from rural real estate and they go to condos and single-family homes where it's more turn and burn, where it's a 5-minute drive to do a showing. Right? And so the economics of it kind of makes sense when you think about the quality. But that's what we— that's where we really try to fulfill, is front-load the information so that the individual— this is going to be one of the most important decisions of your life, you know, besides from, say, getting married and having children. Buying a homestead property is one of the most important decisions you'll make in your life, that if you do it right, you'll have a road of, of gold in front of you. If you do it wrong, you'll have a road of you know, horse poo poo in front of you. And so if you can do that right out of the gate, it's huge. And so we expect that realtors aren't going to be that great. That's why if you want to buy a good homestead, you— it's about taking responsibility. So we front load the education, help you understand. You can take the course, watch 52 reviews, and then just be in our directory and then pick any of the properties that are still out there. They're all live and listed. And look at any of them. We publish 10 to 20 a week. And so you can just constantly learn. And, and I would encourage people, if they're interested in this offer, to even just outside look at listings and reviews that we do outside of your area, just to learn. Because the more times your eyes can observe certain characteristics in the land, you're just going to get better and better and better at it. And so this is a really convenient way to do it. I drove around forever to find a place and have put in the kilometers and the miles, and it's, it's tough.

I think they have to— a lot of times they're running to get out of the city, and I think you've got it because they also have to run to something. So, uh, you spoke on it with your children. This could be something that you could pass on to them, and that's only because You took that. So, so, so we want people to take the time and take it really serious and, and either learn how to pick out a property or put their trust in you and find one, you know, that's, that's put through the— that's been combed and, and go all in on it. And it's worth that investment because, my God, this is— could be forever. One of the things people got to get into, I think, is, and maybe we're just talking out loud and thinking about this together. I don't know why. Well, why people coming through the line, I'm so rooted here. I'm not moving, like bury me in a pine box and plant an apple tree over me.

Yeah, totally.

When people say how long you've been here, I say 90 years. Because Grandpa got it in 1932. That's right.

Yeah.

And, uh, I'm not going anywhere. And, uh, people are transient. Transient, maybe that's the word I was looking for earlier. Yeah, they don't— I don't feel they're terribly rooted. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

Um, I don't know. I don't either. I mean, in some ways, part of our heritage is transitory. You know, people have always migrated. You know, people move around.

I've noticed homesteaders tend to be attracted to both being rooted and homestead. I mean, I'm the classic example. My God, we would spend 10 months in a converted school bus.

That's right.

Going to every single state.

Yep.

We had this itch. I don't have that itch no more. That scratched it. Yeah. That was actually a search. For land that we were coming into. You know, if you grow up into a certain religion, at some point you have to decide, is that my religion?

Yes.

Or is that my parents' religion? Because we've always been on this land, I had to make that decision about the land because I didn't just inherit it. I had to make my parents— my siblings don't want it, but the way my dad set it up is I need to buy it from them. To make the inheritance even, because it would have been terribly lopsided if he would have just given me this land. He was asset rich. And so I had to make a decision. Am I going to buy it? You know, it's interesting us talking here because looking across America and looking at threats, you know, we went up in Maine, we consider Maine, but it was, they have With Maine, it's very cold, but then it's, uh, what do you— and then it's, um, what am I trying to say? Um, oh, and in summer when it's nice, when we were there, they had the crazy mosquitoes.

Yes.

And you got to protect yourself against that.

Well, we don't have that here. We're dry, but—

oh really?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So it's still because of the humidity there.

Well, and it's also just the amount of lakes. So for example, you go into, um, say Eastern Michigan.

Okay, okay.

You know, with all those tiny lakes, same as Northern Ontario, um, it's buggy. It's really buggy. It's humid and it's buggy. Um, we're in a drier boreal, so we don't get that. We'll get some mosquitoes for about a month a year, maybe, and kind of, uh, May, the month of May might be a little bit buggy, but not— I can still be outside in a t-shirt all day, and it might just be wear a hoodie at nighttime. But yeah, not bad at all.

You consider all that, you consider all that in this, and, and you absolutely go through that. There's no perfect place. I mean, that's what we ended up concluding is, hey, um, yep, this, this is the devil we know. Versus the devil we don't. You know, there's problems here. We got a, we got a public road right going, going right through. I mean, we are on a dead end, but we got a public road right through the middle of our property. I mean, it couldn't be more right in the middle of it. Uh, but you know, the mosquitoes in Maine, or the, uh, only 3 inches of rain in Arizona, or the, um, there was a guy in Minnesota. I was editing, he was in there with me. And wife was in there socializing and I'm editing. All of a sudden he says, you know, it gets -60 in Minnesota Fahrenheit. I don't know what that is Celsius, but that's so cold.

That's unbelievable. It's, it's—

what is that Celsius? Somebody, somebody—

I mean, well, Celsius and Fahrenheit line up at -40. So -40 is— we don't— I'm not— I'm nowhere near that cold.

I said, don't bad things happen at -60? He said, yeah, you're face freezes off and your, your car won't start.

But yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it'd be interesting to see what kind of listings you have up there in Minnesota.

But well, Minnesota is a lot colder than here. Yeah, way cold. Isn't that something?

It's colder than Anchorage, Alaska.

Minnesota's cold. Yeah. And it's because it's humid cold too. Humid cold is deadly, just like humid heat is deadly. You know, dry heat is so much more tolerable. That's what we have up here in the summer is dry heat. It's nice. It'll be 100 Fahrenheit, but it'll be, there's no humidity, not as dry as Arizona, but, but it's dry and so it's pleasant. And then nights kind of cool down a bit, which is nice. But yeah, Minnesota, it's hot and muggy in the summer and, and Minnesota's on that cusp of temperate to boreal. It's kind of an interesting climate region. Yeah, because it's the same in Vermont and New York. Those are boreal regions, but they still have really fairly wet summers. They still get lots of precipitation in the summer. We get no rain in the summer. Zero.

Yeah.

Like we'll get the, you know, probably less than 5 rainfalls between May and early October. Not kidding. So most of our precipitation comes in the form of snow in the winter, which is really cool if you, if you adapt to it. And that's what I've done on my property is I've done all these earthworks that, that I benefit from these main watersheds where snow melts into, and I've put ponds there. And so I'm getting millions of liters of water moving through these sheds, which was already naturally happening, but now I can just hold more water there, which is great for fire suppression and for, you know, any, anything else that needs water, anything that needs, that is, that is life needs water, right?

All right. What would you say a more, um, advanced mistake somebody would make? So, so they think they know what they're doing, or maybe they do know what they do. Maybe they understand a little permaculture. Maybe they've homesteaded before. What are, what are, what are some mistakes somebody who thinks they know what they're doing is going to make?

Oh man. I mean, I made a lot of them. Um, okay.

What were your mistakes there?

Yeah, some of them. I mean, one mistake I made that was pretty big was I was really set on putting my house, which is almost done now, in, in a place. And I'm glad I did put it there in the end because it is the best place as far as the way the land is shaped, the view, the aspect towards the sun and all that shielding from the prevailing winds in the winter. It is the best place for that. However, I could have potentially put it in a slightly different place and saved myself at least $30,000 on excavation fees. And that's where, you know, a little bit more prodding around, um, which sometimes makes a mess, but a bit more prodding around, I could have found. Because the challenge I have is I'm on a rocky knob. I'm on a big ridge, not on a primary ridge, on a secondary ridge and I've gotten good topography. I've got ridge exposed, southeast exposure. I've got valleys, I've got riparian, I've got all kinds of different microclimates here, which is lovely. And I think that's one thing that makes a property great. Microclimate, actually, that's another one of the 11 scales of permanence that I didn't mention. Microclimate is that if I spend a bit more time and slowed down my design process with the house. I was just so eager to design and build my own house. It's a bucket list item for a lot of guys, you know, it was for me. Yeah, I'm 44, I'll be 45 this year. I was like, this is a big bucket list. I want to build my own home, passive solar, all the cool stuff about earthships and all that. I want to do that. And yeah, if I would have spent— if I would have slowed down on the design and really thought more and basically took a— if I would have started my construction a year later, I could have made some decisions up here where I could have saved a lot of money. One, another one, so house location, one, because I, because I spent about $25,000 Canadian to excavate the site that my house is in because my house is bermed into the mountain, which is great because it's got this ICF, insulated concrete form basement, that's, you know, bermed into the mountain. So the north side is completely buried, and then it's facing south. So huge windows on the bottom, and then the second floor is above. So from the back of the house, it only looks like a one-story house, but then you walk in and you go down, and it's a total, um, walkout basement, as they call it. Um, so that was an expensive excavation because I had to have a 40-ton machine up here for 6 days straight. And he had the big hammer— the hammer itself weighed 16,000 pounds, and it took him an hour to change over. So he could only And it was the kind of job where it was so rocky that you can only really have an excavator do it. You can't have any other kind of machine come in cuz the, the, the ground is all sharp, jagged rubble. So he would hammer, hammer, hammer for 4 hours, change the, the implement over, and then he would bucket for another 4 hours to move the material. And so we got this great impervious, will never be moved building site, but it was an expensive, that's expensive to, for a foundation before you're even pouring concrete. Another thing I did is that on this site, this— there's my property's like kind of like a big piece of pie going down a ridge. So it's going down a mountain. So the bottom of my property is 200 feet lower than the top of my property. And it's a big piece of pie coming up. And there's this driveway that winds its way up. And this is a critical thing that the first developers of this property made is that they put the driveway for the most part perfectly. And there's two water draws that come down the property that almost go down the piece of pie like this. It's where the snow melts and the water sheds down into these little streams that form seasonally. And the driveway, up until the last switchback, is between those water draws, which is great because then you don't have to have any culverts crossing, uh, the driveways. But then on the last switchback he crossed over one of them, meaning that I had to put two culverts in the driveway. And so if he would have designed that better, we could have saved those culverts and all that digging. And or what I might have been able to do if I spotted it early enough is I could have just changed the driveway because it didn't even have crush on it when I bought this. And I could have just kept it within this inside of those, uh, that water draw and saved having two culverts crossing the driveway. So it's stuff like that, you know. Um, and that's where if you can be on a property, most importantly during the precipitous time of year when water's flowing, that's the best time to observe earthworks on your property that, that are critical, is where does water flow, because water is an asset or it's your worst nightmare. And so it's an asset or liability, basically. And so observe where those things happen before you make your critical earthworks on the property.

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm almost a fan of, you know, Joel Salatin says don't put up a permanent fence until you've had a fence there, a temporary one there for 3 years. I'm kind of the mind, you know, I wasn't— I'm not a big fan of, you know, planting the fruit trees right away either because they're permanent. You know, let's make sure we know for sure where they're going to go. There's a lot of pressure to plant a tree, you know. Uh, you know, there's that saying, best time, best time to plant a tree 20 years ago, next time now. But you know, I don't know, you got— they're so permanent. But it could be that way with the house too. I imagine you're selling a lot of— or you're finding a lot of raw land for people. Uh, you know, if I were—

no, we don't.

Oh, you don't? It's all with houses?

Well, we, we do do raw land, but I actually encourage people to not buy raw land.

Oh, really? Why?

Well, because if you stack up the costs, man, I mean, it really adds up. Like building costs right now. I mean, in Tennessee, you're looking at $250 to $300 and beyond per square foot building costs. It's the same in Canadian dollars up here. So building isn't cheap. And, you know, if you're— but if you're a good tradesman, there's a case for it for sure, but it all depends. And, and I always say the devil's in the details, but when it comes to properties, what I prefer and what is way better value for people is to buy a homestead property that doesn't have your dream home, but it's orientated in the right way. It's, it's, it sits in the right place. You got a nice, uh, you know, 3-car garage, uh, you know, a detached garage shop kind of thing. You got a barn for animals and feed. You got a tool shed, stuff like that. Upgrade the house, renovate the house, spend $50,000 to $100,000 on renovation to get it better. Put in new windows, you know, change the plumbing or electrical if you need to. We see a lot of value in Kentucky and Amish properties and then upgrading those because you can buy crazy value in Kentucky. So do that because to go raw land, put in the driveway, clear the land, all these things, they really add up.

Yeah. And so when you hear raw land, you're talking— what you hear is forested, no roads, no water tapped, nothing. That's what we're talking about with raw land, right?

Mostly, yeah. Because if you're buying raw land in, say, your region or some of the sort of agricultural zones of— yeah, Missouri, Kentucky, whatever— they're raw land and they were just used as a farm lease and they're often a subdivide on a larger section. So somebody subdivided out, say, 80 acres. There's a barn there, a road like those kinds of raw lands are pretty good if you can find them. And we do list some of those properties. But yeah, for the most part, when I'm talking raw land, it's like there's not— there's nothing there. I'm glad I brought that up.

I would have thought— I would have thought maybe you would have liked—

it's a mistake people make.

If somebody gets raw land, I would say Well, did you buy raw land?

No, I gave up on it because I couldn't. That's what I was looking for at first because that's what I wanted to do.

That's funny.

And then my wife, it was actually my wife's suggestion. She's like, why don't we just start looking for places with a house? And even if it's not a perfect house. And I said, yeah, okay. And we found this place. This place was cheaper. It had a little house. It's this little cabin we live in. We still live in it until our house, our main house is done. But it It's okay, it functions. But yeah, it gave us a place to stay. Whereas without that, I would have been living in a yurt or an RV. Yeah, had way more uncomfortable circumstances.

And so yeah, that's not realistic where you are. Yeah, that's a good point. I'm glad we brought that up.

Yeah.

Okay, so tell me about this 365 film that you guys submitted into the film festival. Did, did, does it relate to any of this they were talking? Just to be fair, I only skimmed it. I didn't— I want to watch it live with everybody else.

Not really. I mean, they're, they're their own unique couple, you know. They're in the, in the coastal region of British Columbia. I think they're on one of the islands. And, um, they just— I think it was Chris, the, the, the, the, the, the husband. It was his idea to be, let's just go out on the land. And I think they did this during COVID too, actually. So it was kind of, you know, similar experience to what I had, is that he just said, let's go and see if we can live completely off the land for a year, not buying any food. Yeah, so it's hardcore. And so he— but Chris is a pretty amazing dude. I mean, he grew up fishing and foraging and stuff like that, so he had a pretty strong foundational knowledge an experience, but his wife didn't. She didn't. She was totally green. So they went out and just did it. And the documentary is basically sharing their journey, and it's, it's hardcore. Like, it's like, we're— I'm not even that hardcore right now. I mean, we are in other ways because we're off-grid with our power, and, you know, we're, we're off-grid in other ways. Like, I look at food, water, energy, shelter, right? Like, 4 things you need to live.

Yeah.

And so they just dialed the food in. And yeah, it's hardcore. I mean, it's— well, especially when, when it's horticultural, right? When it's not just raising animals. They did that too, but he's out fishing and, and hunting and stuff like that as well.

Well, let's talk about that. There's a, there's an idea that if you're off-grid, you have to go— you're— you have to be hardcore. But Curtis, you're in a well-lit room, you got a cello back there, uh, you talked about air conditioning and heating. So bust that myth or confirm it right now about, about— yeah, it's off-grid.

Well, it's— it just comes down to money, really. Like, how much money do you want to spend? You know, like you said earlier too, there is no— there is no perfect homestead property. Well, there is if you got the money, right? And so it all comes down to— and that's like what I'm looking to set people up with is build them and sell them. That's something I'm interested in doing eventually. Yeah, but Um, because I, I do want to build the perfect homestead property. I really do. I think it can exist, uh, with the right resources. But yeah, I mean, it's all a compromise. So I mean, yeah, I mean, our off-grid system is pretty skookum. Like, it's, uh, it's way more hardcore than most would do. It's basically an off-grid system for a small community, um, because we'd like eventually like to have other homes up here and, uh, not for sale but just, you know, within our family and stuff. Um, so it can power all of that. And so, yeah, no, we've got all the creature comforts, you know, off-grid. Um, the thing is with off-grid power though, it is a lifestyle thing because there are times that the lights just won't come on and you got to figure out why. You know, it does happen. I got on a plane to Mexico. I haven't left the homestead for 3 years. I haven't flown in 3 years. And I used to fly all the time. I was— I've been to 45 US states. I've traveled around and been all over the world teaching farming and stuff. And during COVID I'm, I'm not flying, not taking a shot. So, so I didn't travel and I, I kind of adapted my career without traveling. It's, I'm glad I did. But I did go and speak at that Anarcopoco conference down in Acapulco, Mexico a few weeks ago. And I said to my wife, I'm not going to leave the homestead during winter because snow is a big deal up here.

Yeah.

It requires quite a bit of work and managing, you know, and, and that's my role. Until my son or my daughter are old enough to do it. Uh, my wife's busy on the inside the homestead, that she's got enough to deal there. And so I do that stuff. But the snow melted early, and so I, I decided to go to AnarcoPoco because they, they had a spot for me. And okay, let's go. The day I left, Justin, it was all— the snow was melted the day I left. The next day it snowed for 36 hours straight.

Oh my God.

And my wife and kids were snowed in and completely unable to leave the homestead. But we've prepared for this. But the thing that also was terrible is she left the Tesla plugged in to the off-grid power system overnight, completely drained the batteries.

Okay. Oh no.

So she is— we don't even have cell service up here. She had to get to a part in our property where she'd get a little bit of cell service. She texts me. I wake up totally jet-lagged from, you know, 24 hours of travel. I just exhausted. In the morning in Mexico, she's like, hey, there's no power and we're snowed in. And I'm going, oh, the one thing that I was trying to not have happen happened. But you know what? We troubleshooted it. We got it. We got through it. And I'm glad, I'm glad it happened because it tested the resilience of the system, which is important. Because if your system— and some people make these really nebulous off-grid systems that are so nuanced and you got to know every little thing. And, and old school off-gridders will always tell you that there's just always these little things and nobody can manage the system except them. But we figured it out, and I'm glad we did because she— I troubleshooted through, boom, system lit back up, no problem. But it was, you know, for half that day I was just going, oh my goodness, the day I leave everything goes wrong. But, you know, it was a— it was a testament to the system. And so our system is pretty, pretty, pretty top of the line. I've spent about $130,000 on it, Canadian. It's got 2 kilowatts of solar. We've got 100 kilowatt-hours of battery storage. I've got a 13-kilowatt diesel generator with 600 liters of stored fuel.

And so, yeah, even Rebecca could do that, I think.

I think so. I think so.

Okay, yeah, so as a reminder, folks can see this film of the 365 in the upcoming film festival. You helped produce it, I imagine. And then for folks to learn the 11, what was it called? They're 11.

11 on the Land.

Yeah. You know, to not only learn how to find their homestead to then tap into a directory, do they just go to freedomfarmers.com for both of those, or where do they go?

They get, they get everything at Freedom Farmers. All the fromthefield.tv is all in there now too. We consolidated it in. Okay, so, so that's all in there. That's called the Video Vault. And so everything's at freedomfarmers.com. So I'll, I'll make— I've got a link for you to share with your audience. That'll get them to that course and this deal. So this deal is better than anything we have. It's so that you're paying for the course and then you get 6 months of freedomfarmers.com with the 20+ courses we have, the Homestead Accelerator. We have a whole social media, private social media group in there with a map where you can find people of like mind in areas that you want to go to. And, um, yeah, it's a real kind of all-in-one thing for people to have a solution for them.

And I imagine it won't always be on sale. It's a sale right now, so they need to see this and get on it before you change your mind.

That's right.

This deal—

I'm just looking at my notes here. Was— what's the time on this one? Let me just—

well, you look that up. I'll say this, that's what I was getting at with community and loneliness is, uh, it, it, and people also assume that too, but it doesn't have to be. I mean, with the internet now, we can connect with people online and then actually form real relationships and find one another and that, that turn into physical relationships. I mean, we— you and I knew each other digitally before, and then just over time, uh, you know, eventually rubbed shoulders. Yeah.

And that's what, that's what makes it, right? That is the real— it's the connection with people in the real world makes it. So use these tools, you know, use these tools. They're great tools, but build the relationships offline, man. It's now more, now more important than ever to, to get connected people offline. Because this, you know, all these conveniences that are being provided for us, they can take them away. And we saw during COVID that's what they want to do. They want to entice you in with all these conveniences that make your life so much easier. You never know— you never knew you needed the thing until they told you about it. But, um, then they take it away. And, you know, there's talks about digital ID and all this in the World Economic Forum. They want to You know, hopefully you and I can stay online, but there might come a time where we're not online because we don't want to take a shot or, or go along with the next stupid thing that they want you to go along with.

Yeah, you're right. You know, and I think this is a good thing, uh, either way. I mean, hey, you know, you— I, I feel like it, it provides this security, which is our first instinct. To get secure and safe.

Yep.

But it just so happened it's not like we're saving beans, you know what I mean? We're not, we're not stockpiling beans and rice. We're building something that is going to, that is going to continue to give, you know, it's the grass is going to get better every year and the fruit trees are going to become more abundant every year. And so that when your children step into it, good times or bad, they're enjoying the fruit.

That's exactly it, man. And I've always said that it's— there's never been a better time to get into farming or homesteading. And even because when I started urban farming, I was— it was good times. The economy was good. I was selling to high-end restaurants, making premium money on, on a premium product. But even during bad times, farming's valuable because people need to eat.

Yeah.

So farming is valuable in good times and bad times. And the thing you have to find is that center of being grounded and understanding that the process and the journey is actually the most beautiful part about it.

That's right.

And, and you have to like that home, you have to like that lifestyle, right? Some people aren't ready for that lifestyle, and that's fine. But if you like the lifestyle— I'm not homesteading out of fear, I'm homesteading out of I love life And I want to experience God's creation in nature as best as I can and be around that more often than man's creation in cities. And I want my children to understand God's creation because that's how they learn. So when they're out there exploring nature and looking at all the sticks and plants and the bugs and all that stuff, they're learning everything. And it's foundational.

Yeah, that's good. That's probably a very good note to end on. That's a happy ending right there. So I'm going to leave the links for everything that we've mentioned, the film fest, the, the course, the directory, all that. So I'll leave that. And I think it's a good thing you're doing. And yeah, when, when, when you reached out earlier with some of the new stuff you're doing, because we haven't talked in a little bit, I was like, yeah, this is exciting. And I think my audience will benefit this from this greatly because much, much of them are just getting started and they really need to. I really believe that they could make some mistakes, but those could be easily mitigated by investing in themselves and getting some training before they dive in.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah.

All right.

Thanks, Curtis.

Thanks for having me, brother.

Enjoy your day.