EX Mennonite RuthAnn Zimmerman Schools Me in Traditional Skills

La la la la la, let me be free. Wake up, rise and shine. 10 hours of sleep. I'd say they're tired from our journeys to Homestead Fest.

That's the most sleep I've gotten in a while.

Feel pretty good?

I feel much better.

Yeah, he's feeling really good. How many hours did you sleep? 13. Is that how many? All right. You don't even have as many fingers for how many hours you slept. He crashed right here while we were on our walk. I was changing just now and had shooting pain come through my ribs right about here. I get this every once in a while, just out of nowhere, pulling rib muscles. I don't know, I guess it's from stress, chronic inflammation. If I catch it early and take it easy, it doesn't get super inflamed, so I'm gonna take it easy as I can. We're gonna have guests. He's a talking machine this morning. He's feeling good. She wants to go get berries. The raspberries and blackberries are starting. I need to empty this. Okay, y'all ready?

Yeah.

Coffee and body ready to go?

Oh yeah, Ruth Ann. That coffee is delicious.

It's really good. It's very—

yeah, it is delicious coffee.

Yeah, Elvin or Alvin?

Elvin.

Ruth Ann? Maxwell?

Harrison?

That was a good guess. Come on, Kendric. Yeah, I got one in a thousand chance. Who?

Kendric.

Kendric.

And that's Maxwell.

Okay. All right, hopefully you ex-Mennonites are going to school me in some traditional skills today. A little bit. A little bit.

We'll see.

Maybe some comfrey skills. Oh yeah, maybe these are some of your hot videos, I noticed. Maybe some dry canning. Potatoes.

Maybe a Pennsylvania Dutch word.

Oh yeah.

Okay, say, um, bibbistew.

Bibbistew to Mario.

How are you this morning?

Wow, muy bien. I said to resort to Spanish. What did he just say? He answered, it's been good.

Yeah, well, you see, they have an English accent to it, so you can figure it out. Yeah, say it, Rebecca.

What? What am I saying?

Ethan Goode? Did you say it? Okay, okay. What do you want to see today? We have all the animals, we have garden, so we kind of have to divide and conquer to do chores.

So yeah, you probably won't see them all, but I would like for you to explain to me about your sheep because I don't have sheep. Okay, I really want to visit the milk cow too.

Okay, well then we need to catch a ride with the boys. There's no rush.

I'm like, what time did you go to bed last night?

He's like, 9. I was like, you've had plenty of sleep.

Where'd you sleep, Jonah?

10 hours. 10 hours of sleep isn't enough for you?

Thank you. Thank you for allowing us to have—

oh yeah, allow us to— strangers to come to your house and take over your bed.

How was the room?

It was great.

It was great.

It was good.

It worked out great.

It's been a minute since you slept in bunk beds, right?

Yeah, I slept on the top.

She jumped up there.

I did. Yeah, I slept on the top. It was— it worked fine. I could still hear him snore, so I knew he was there.

Yeah, I'm surprised you guys weren't up from hearing this.

Hey, no, we have insulated walls.

Okay, that helps.

Snore away. I'll show you in a minute. We have pigs right next to the big garden, which is the same idea.

You've got bindweed coming up.

Yeah, Ruth Ann's just jumping in.

Got a few sips of coffee, a few sips of coffee and a couple hands full of weeds. Yeah, that's such a nice goose.

Guys, we ready?

How far is it? Can we walk? Can I walk?

Uh, is it too far? Fish. She wants to see the cows and the sheep. Why do you think she wants to see the cows and the sheep, Melvin?

Because she wants sheep.

Okay. That's part of my retirement plan. Okay.

So when, when I don't have people drinking gallons and gallons of milk at my house anymore, I want a dairy sheep. I want to learn to spin the wool and yeah.

That is a flat tire on the back truck.

Yeah, it is.

Thanks for sharing.

Ruthann right here. We're trying to grow up fruit trees. We're doing like Joel Salatin, we're foresting our pastures and pasturing our forests. So we're clearing forests to make more pasture land, keeping some of the trees. And where we have pasture, we plant trees. We have to protect them.

Yeah, you have to protect them when they're little.

We put physical barriers around them, but they started growing tall and the cows just reach over them. Oh yeah, we just have to net them off.

You have— yeah.

Here we go. But wait, wait till you see. Oh, you saw how easy it— oh, she coming out. All right, everybody clear out of the way there. She's going to go to the side-by-side. Look at him, what's his name?

She's like, people, there's people everywhere this morning.

Ruth Ann milking the Rhodes' cow works better with a camera. She just gets with it, doesn't she? She forgot all about the camera. How many cows are you milking right now?

We just have one, but we do have 3 milk cows. Okay, I don't need 3 milk cows. I'm trying to decide which one to sell. Okay, because in the wintertime I hate myself when I have too many milk cows. When it's 30 below and I have to go milk. In the summertime, give me 6, I'll just sit out there in the pasture and milk them and I'm happy.

Too bad it doesn't work that way, right?

Right.

Can't offer them in the winter.

But I'm trying to be very mature about it and remember that winter comes and I have to plan for winter.

Now Tara from Slow Down Farmstead, she just lets the cat— she's in Canada. Yeah, she's got the cat's had it.

Well, see, we're, we're trying. She's like, you're done, lady. I understand that message.

All right, Jonah, we'll let you finish.

Have you seen a big difference in the fertility of your grass with the sheep following the cows?

Oh, definitely, because you see these multiflora roses? Yeah, cows don't eat them. People hate them, but I love them. Yeah, because it's turning multiflora roses into lamb. Keeps insisting I carry him. Remember the ribs?

Really?

Come on, can I just set you down? Ah, okay. All right, this may be the last, right?

Only book that was out there when we got a milk cow was—

I hear it over there. This is why we're testing it. It's not working. Oh, it's not hooked right here, guys. We got it hitting. Hopes that we hooked it up. If you're not testing, you're guessing. Time to eat now. I heard Lily calling for us. Are you hungry? Henry, are you hungry?

Yes.

Are you boys hungry? Hey, yeah, what do you want, tofu or tempeh?

They don't know what that is. No, you know, it's good.

You passed the test.

Tofu is soybeans.

I'm glad you don't know what that is.

It's fake meat.

That's why it's made out of beans.

We would never eat that.

We at this— we had dinner with the Sowards on Saturday night. You know, their boys are exactly this age.

Oh, I bet that was a hoot.

And we, you know, we have teenagers, so we talk about what are red flags in a mate, right?

Is that one of them?

And so the boys know what their red flags are. Okay, anyway, so we— I asked the question to the Soward boys anyway, and Harrison's red flags— can you tell Justin what your red flags are?

I like this. We need to do this with our kids.

If the girl likes Taylor Swift, then no.

Yeah, nope.

And what's your other one? That's a red flag. What's the other one?

I forget.

If she's vegan? Is that what you said?

Yeah, vegan. I've had vegan food. That's an in?

I've had tofu from the vegans because we had, um, Jewish people. Jewish people at our house. We had tofu because they can't eat meat.

Oh, because they're vegan.

Yeah, because of kosher.

Oh, okay. Well, the Jews are.

They eat vegan when they're, um, yeah, because it's easier because they don't have to worry about if things are kosher. But anyway, the Sour Boys, and it was a very, very good conversation. And Kendrick was like, well, one of my red flags— oh no, he saw a lady come up to me and just be like real dramatic. Oh my God, he's like, that's a red flag.

Oh really?

What'd you make today?

So we have eggs and potatoes.

Okay, we've done some barbecue rub, Boston butt. You guys eat pork?

Yes.

All right, my boys actually said that.

Yes. They're gonna have to pace themselves. I'm gonna say, okay, let's see, start with 2 pieces of bacon, right?

No, my kids would just eat bacon too.

All right, well, we're gonna have some— we're gonna have some emu for lunch, okay? Would you eat emu?

It's a bird.

I looked up one of Ruth Ann's most popular videos last night. Too bad we couldn't have those Amish cinnamon rolls.

I know.

She said we would have had to start—

I would have had to start last night.

Well, you have to be able to eat gluten, I'm sure.

Yeah.

So you dry can with a different variety of— you don't do russet then?

Oh, I do whatever I've got my— can get my hands on.

Okay.

Um, but I always peel potatoes that I didn't grow myself because potatoes are fogged with an herbicide to keep them from sprouting.

Yeah.

Um, so the— I need to get the peels off.

I heard they have to off-gas of the conventional potatoes before they can even sell them.

You can't tell if they've had that done to them or not.

So yeah, I think we— yeah, this works.

Okay, perfect. So this, this video on your channel is like— I don't know, Austin, pull up a clip— what, 500,000 views, something crazy?

See, the funny thing is YouTube took it down for a while because somebody reported it as not— as being rebel canning, right? As unsafe.

Yeah, right. See, they were coming after that for a while.

Yeah. And then I was at the time, I was working with a YouTube—

what was her title?

Yeah, it's like a—

it's a a real person. Yeah, with YouTube. And she got you back on?

Yeah, she did.

I, I messaged her, how wonderful, can you fix this for me?

And within the week it was back. So I like to dice my potatoes.

What is it?

I'm, I'm at Justin Rhodes's house and they don't drink a lot of coffee, but they made coffee for us and it's delicious. Usually people that Don't drink coffee? Don't have good coffee?

Yeah, good, good, good, good. Because it's a special treat for me once a week, so I want it to be really good. Oh, it's mold-free, it's very organic, Honduran.

Oh, I love it.

We ground the beans this morning.

All right.

Yes, and the beans were in the freezer until then.

Nice.

And then we French pressed it. I wonder if you two want to go get us the turkey shaw.

Where's it at?

I believe it's in the bash shed. Okay, and Alvin and I'll start moving the turkeys. The chicken tractor didn't get moved at all while we were gone, so it's gotten mudded up. But it's time to move these turkeys anyway. Look at the manure, it's kind of getting heavy in this spot. So let's, uh, let's move them. And they've outgrown the chicken tractor, they're ready for the turkey shawl. I keep them in the chicken tractor while they're young, just the extra aerial protection. Yeah, but now that they're this big, nothing's really going to get them. It looks like Ruth Ann might have some insight on our mysterious onions. They just dropped. Yeah, this is not from— no, I think we assumed a cow came in here and laid down, and some of them were shorter season.

That's why the bulbs are smaller and they've already fallen over. Oh, so they're bad when my onions fall over because I'm— I don't grow The, the heart of me is a growing gaze. I just like to make it all pretty and do things. When it comes time to harvest it, I get really sad.

Yeah, we're gonna look inside the greenhouse, but I want Ruth Ann to talk to us about comfrey. Hey Ruth Ann, you gotta tell us one of your other most popular videos. Roll that, Austin.

I'm gonna show a couple of the different ways that we use comfrey, and we don't nearly use the entire plant.

Alvin was telling me there's some sort of misconception. Elvin, sorry, it's funny. You're too polite to correct me. A long time ago.

So with comfrey, the nickname for comfrey is, is bone knit because you can make a poultice and put it on, um, your broken bones. And because it's so rich in minerals, it fortifies your bones. So let's pretend this is by your little Gala apple tree. Yeah, we're gonna take some up too, and you You plant it at the root of it, and then when it's like this— can I ruin this one?

This is what I was gonna hopefully show you, but you're gonna—

okay, so then it's growing like this around your apple trees or your trees, and you're just gonna do this. Yeah, and step it down all around your trees, and it's gonna work like a mulch.

It's called like a living mulch. Getting with it.

Yep.

Yeah, I have so many starts then.

Yeah, so then what we're going to do with this top part—

and that's going to be our living mulch. We'll take that with us.

This is what we're going to plant. Okay, this we're going to stuff into a bucket.

Oh, here we go.

We got water in here.

We'll take those roots with us. Let's go.

Yeah, we're going to plant these. You'll want to put a lid on this and let it sit here in the sun until it smells like something died in it.

Okay. All right, I got, I got it covered. What are we giving you, a raspberry plant?

She just said, I want to take it.

Yeah, she just said— I don't know, she asked.

She's figured she's given us plenty of content. She's gonna take a berry bush. That's right. Well, we're driving around the farm and we found one.

You just stepped—

now you just stepped— you could chop and drop.

You could chop and drop, but I don't usually have the tools with me. Like, I don't wear that nice apron and bring all my tools.

You don't have your whole toolbox in here in a dress. Oh, there's a place.

I like it.

She just lifted lifted up her skirt.

This is also poison ivy.

See, you can just pull it off too.

Yeah, there you go.

I just didn't want you to grab it.

It's fine.

There we go. And then now we don't have to haul wood chips up here.

Oh yeah, and it kind of keeps the grass down around it too.

We are pasturing our forest and forestring our pastures, meaning we have open pasture here. Our fruit trees are here to serve the cows. They're a rub, they're shade, but we got to protect them while they're young. And so one of the things. You can see some of the residual wood chips, but that only lasts so long, and we don't have enough wood chips to come and mulch everybody this year. We have like 80 trees, but I bet we have enough comfrey to put—

I bet you do—

4 plants around each tree.

You actually only need this.

Yeah, you don't need it.

Show me what you need, because I was under the impression you could just take—

Yes, you can. Yep, you can just take this. You could make a dozen out of this.

Oh, whoa, whoa! Wait a minute, I like your local apple guy.

He has peach trees too, and so I, I'll get like a couple bushels from them and save them.

This to me would be almost enough to make me want to move somewhere.

Look, Rebecca, you mashed them down.

So this, this is ideally— I don't know what is that.

I know I tried to pull it but I couldn't.

Well, you can pull that.

I don't know what this is.

Here you go, Ruthann. You want to pull it?

Yeah, let's dig that out.

Look at these peaches, they even got color.

I Oh, they're so beautiful.

And peaches want to grow here.

They do.

That might be white peach and this might be a regular, meaning they won't succumb to a lot of disease, or they won't do disease, or— and, and here's what we're doing too with our fruit trees. We're pretty much sheer— well, I wouldn't say it's total utter neglect. It's like, it's pretty, but we're pretty prepared to just replace what died. And that's what we do every winter.

Ideally, this is what I want my orchard to look Like is a nice big stand of comfrey at the bottom of every fruit tree because the comfrey draws your pollinators and it's a beautiful little marriage.

Yeah, and we have that whole—

it draws pollinators with these flowers. Checking out the boys' progress at the pond. Wow, I think they're trying to get this ready for the Fourth of July party. They've angled the 2x4 to the telephone pole. It's the one gift we got out of Helene. They're making do. All right, count of 3. 1, 2, 3, go! Anticlimactic. Go ahead, we're waiting. Whoa, there it is! Hey, good job on this so far. Yeah, what's the next We're gonna start putting the dock boards on. Where are the dock boards? Over in the cabin shed. We have some leftover. Yeah, we do. Yeah, some decking boards. Yeah, we have some decking boards. Heck yeah. You guys want to go harvest some lunch with us? Grab a Boston butt.

Yeah, Justin used the cabbage for the dinner last night.

Oh wow, Rebecca, look, we got one right here. We're serious.

So we have something for you to start harvesting and putting some of this in the freezer.

Yeah, Rebecca, we got to get on this.

Yes, we're doing it this week.

Nice little gift to come back to after— are you guys cooking that together? Hold on one second, we're going to soak it real quick.

Soak it in salt water, it brings any worms to the top that you have.

Oh, we're learning all the tricks. All right, we're going to get the bugs out. I call these bugs our organic stamp of approval.

Oh, was it mud I stepped in?

No, it was like—

she just came and wiped my feet.

Hey, that's you. That's humble, isn't it?

Yeah, thank you.

Wash it. We're gonna do a feet washing. You're washing today. This is— this has got to get harvested like tomorrow.

Yeah, we're gonna start working on this.

You're gonna have— we're gonna have to get—

we're gonna have to go out there every day this week. Yes. Tell me about this. The Heart of the Homestead. This is not— this is just a sample.

It's just a sample.

What's that about? Is it out yet?

So you can pre-order it, um, and it'll come in September.

Okay, I was skimming through it and you can pre-order on Amazon.

Yeah, on my website you can, you can order from Amazon or Christian Book or Barnes Noble, any of those places.

Anywhere people buy books. Well, how do you think this stands out from other books?

I think it has, it has more heart because when I started writing it, at the end of every chapter, you know, I'm passionate about growing food. I'm passionate about my milk house. I can write, you know, 3 chapters about it. But at the end of all of it, if you're feeding your family all raw, homegrown, nourishing foods and you forget to nurture their heart, it's all for naught. Like, it doesn't count for anything if you can't touch the hearts of your family. Wow.

So this is about cultivating the homestead but also the heart of the family.

Yeah. So even though I'm writing about the milk cow and growing food. It's about getting to the heart of the family.

Yeah, I noticed that there's a little bit in here. Well, there's organic mulch, uh, there was a bit on how to start a garden.

Yeah.

And then here it is, right next to the garden: growing confidence and character. We've got a Boston butt coming up. Y'all eat pork, don't you, Evan?

Oh, we love pork.

Okay, we—

homegrown pork, right?

Yeah, yeah. And this is broccoli, homegrown broccoli, within an hour. You like broccoli? Nope, but they said you better eat it. Is that why you're eating it first? Get it over with. How's that broccoli? Fresh.

It's so good.

Very, very good.

It never even got cooled off.

It is so good.

About to sit down, long-form podcast with these guys. Beautiful story. Ex-Mennonites, left the Mennonite faith community, I don't know, and then, uh, became, uh, started teaching these old traditional skills and putting it up online. This is going to be a fascinating story. The Mennonites. So what, what, what is your cultural and spiritual heritage?

So most people wouldn't know the difference between Old Order Mennonites and Amish. It's the best way to explain it. It's what most people recognize as the Amish. Old Order Mennonites are very similar. So both Amish and Old Order Mennonites are considered Christian.

Okay, we interrupt this program. Oh wow, it's a little tiny one.

Last time when I got $20, it was like that big.

Okay, so how much do they pay to eat this one?

No, 10 cents.

Okay. All right. All right. Carnivore.

I just swallowed it. Eating the minnow.

What a great conversation with them. Austin, roll a highlight clip of that.

We're very, very intentional about— we are raising our food because we don't want to buy our food because we don't trust the food that comes off the grocery store shelves.

Yeah.

Why don't I trust the— well, Do you want to go down that rabbit hole, Justin?

Abundance Plus members, we're dropping that podcast early. It should be available now. For all of you on YouTube, we will drop that this weekend. So I look forward to you guys seeing that, talking about their leaving their Mennonite faith and community And it's similar to the Amish. It's a hardcore thing. It was a big deal. And for them stepping out in faith at the risk of losing their family, and then them building a homestead to instill character in their children— what a different approach! How amazing. And we concluded that Ruth Ann has the skills of our grannies, great-grannies that are gone, and we're having to relearn on the internet. Well, she never lost the skills, so she's like a great-granny. And what a blessing. I can't wait for you guys to see that podcast.

You guys eat them.

We'll have— yeah, we'll eat them.

We come see you in July. We have to steal a bush, some sort of fruit bush. Be sure to check out Ruth Ann on our YouTube. Welcome wealth of information. I'm calling her like that great granny. She never lost this info. Also, on Abundance Plus, we're dropping the podcast now. It'll be on YouTube this weekend, and we have an extended version of this vlog. We did so much in the morning, and I just kept rolling the camera. She's a wealth of information. So Abundance Plus members, you want to check that out. If you're not a member, at the App Store on your phone, it's on Roku, it's on Apple TV, it's on your computer at abundanceplus.com. Happy day.