It’s our Anniversary

I want to go with you.

You can't go with us. It's our anniversary. Distracting him with tractors. Hopefully that'll work. It's okay. It's okay. We'll be back. Happy day. An especially happy day. We've been married 23 years. Annie is here. She's going to give us a day date. Sauna house downtown Asheville. A fancy dinner. Hopefully we can get out of here.

Tractors.

So is he still screaming mama or what?

No, he stopped screaming right as I was getting out.

Okay, all right. Tell him if it weren't for this marriage, he wouldn't be here.

I know, right?

We're on the way there and I thought, why not share this with you guys and get questions from you? We have questions. How long has it been since we did a Q&A?

It's been a very long time.

It's been a minute.

Candy's Life 160: What made you both decide to take such an epic adventure together, and what will you be doing for the next 23 years? You know, it's funny because we were so young. We were 16 and 17 when we started dating.

Met in a youth group.

We had no idea what adventure we were getting into.

What took us on this food adventure, if you're talking about this epic adventure, or like YouTube or homesteading.

Homesteading was my idea.

You know, even mountain boarding, you know, even before that. It's like, yeah, so we— I've been an entrepreneur and that's led us down to do all kinds of different crazy things. And you've always been super supportive and just a good sport and just go along and just support and go along. And you know, it just, it did happen that the food growing journey, you had caught on to the food system not being so good for us.

I will say this, like, we have friends that like still doing the same thing they've always done.

Yeah.

And they're like, you guys have lived like 5 or 6 lives. Like, because you guys have had so many different adventures. And you know, I think that's just maybe who we are. We've, we have always swum, swam, swum? Swam against the current.

We've always been weirdos.

We've always been different. By the time we got to like the Great American Farm Tour, people were just like, ah, they'll be fine.

Where are we gonna be in 23 years?

23 years.

We'll be 68. We'll be almost 70. Wow.

Well, we're gonna still hopefully still be living on our farm.

Joel's there. I see ourselves a lot like Joel's.

I hope we're going— more riding, more traveling, speaking, spending a lot of time with the grandkids and hopefully still growing food.

Mentoring others who were like us when we were young.

Very active.

Shifting to supporting our children's dreams. Mm-hmm.

Shout out to— I don't know how to say this.

Come on, people. Get some normal handles. You can put your name in there.

F-I-I-A-B-E-R-G-Lund. Just try. Fiberglund.

Okay, there you go.

How did you meet is the question.

Well, I was part of a youth group in Hendersonville, and I was Uh, showed up early one Wednesday night. They had gatherings on Wednesday nights.

And I had just moved to North Carolina from Florida with my family, and I was 16, and so my parents were encouraging me to get involved and find friends, and so I was going to our church's, the church that my parents were attending, um, to their Wednesday night youth group, and so I, I remember very vividly parking my car and walking down the street and then around the, around the building to where the youth group was. Yeah, and he was sitting there.

I had already— I'd been sitting there. I was not about to talk to a new girl that I did not know, and I walked right up. Contrary to popular belief, I am, uh, introverted, so I just wouldn't have done that.

And thankfully she walked up to me, and I walked right up to him, and he was like just waiting there. So we've been friends ever since.

Yeah, and he was just sitting there and I was—

and obviously he was a teenager, so I said, hey, and he said, hey, and we started talking.

Austin, you got to play that old clip. We actually went and told that story before on the vlog. I arrived to the church a bit early, and I sat down and just waited in kind of a defeat. I happened to look over to my right, and I happened to see the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life come around that corner, and she began to walk towards me. Great American Farm Tour number 2. I got your Great American Farm Tour bus for our 10-year anniversary coming up.

Really funny.

3 years. In 3 years it'll be 10 years.

We could be free together.

Alrighty.

Oh, there's water in here too.

Yay. This is the second time we've been here. This place is awesome. You guys want a tour? Ultralights, we will not be doing those today. Cold plunge. We'll be going back and forth from cold to hot.

At least I will.

You gonna do cold to hot? I don't know if I'm gonna do it. It feels so good. It's miserable for that first 30 seconds, but after the sessions are over, it's so nice. What is this?

It's like a, it's like a clock.

Oh, cool. Let's do that. Ooh, 183. American country life with kids. How long before you had kids? That's pretty easy.

It was 5 and a half years.

I guess we could say, was that a good idea? Bad idea? On purpose? It was on purpose-ish.

Um, yeah.

We tried getting pregnant early on and—

Well, it was, we tried to get pregnant for about 18 months before we had Jonah, so we did purposely wait like 4 years.

And we had a blast.

We did. Actually. I wish though sometimes that we could have had more kids.

Yeah, we could have had some more before Jonah.

Mm-hmm.

Could have had some more between Gideon and Henry.

I enjoy the kids so much that that's why I say that.

Yeah.

We could have dreams together.

I'll let you answer this one from same person. What was the wedding like?

What was the wedding like? It was like your typical Southern Baptist early 2000s wedding. Well, you gotta explain it.

In case people don't know.

So, it's like 2 o'clock on a Saturday. We had a reception of—

In the fellowship hall.

In the fellowship hall with like ice cream. We had ice cream sundaes for the food.

Very formal. We had a harp at the wedding.

Yeah, it was very formal. I think if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't do it.

Your childhood pastor married us.

Yes, he married us. That's true.

Drove all the way up from Florida for this, for a promise he made.

George Thomason.

You were a little girl.

Well, so when he left our church to go pastor somewhere else, he actually went to the North American Mission Board. To serve on staff there. And when he did, I went up to him at the end of that service and I said, will you come and marry me when I, when I get married? And he said yes. So he came, he fulfilled— he did that to many of the, of my friends that were in my— or that were in that church because we just loved them. And we're still friends with their family today. We love them. And it seems so free.

DC's asking what What does it take to last 23 years? Two words. I'm sorry.

No, walking in each other's forgiveness is what—

That's a much nicer way to put it, isn't it?

Walking in each other's forgiveness so that because we make mistakes—

Hash it out.

Lots of communication, lots of talking.

My parents didn't communicate and then they split up.

Right, and my parents will be celebrating 50 years.

And your parents—

of marriage next to you.

Communicate and bicker and it's great.

Get it out and they say what they need to say.

And they've lasted 50 years? 52. Okay. Get it all out there and apologize.

But also, know who you're marrying.

I guess.

Well, we were so young. No, I do think, okay, wait.

Because who we married are not who we are today.

Yes, but I'm saying like marry a person that you can work with.

Oh, perhaps similar backgrounds.

I think the walking in each other's forgiveness is—

That's not even our advice. That's our mentor's advice.

That's somebody that was a mentor.

Till he became a widow. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, they were married a pretty long time. So.

That was good. We haven't sung it in a long time.

We haven't.

Just think, we're gonna have that in our house.

I know, I'm very excited about that.

Both these, hot and cold. Gotta rinse off. Then we're going in the cold plunge. I'm gonna be a little rusty at this.

It's cold! It's cold, ain't it?

Yeah.

Temperature is like 34 last time we were here, which I think is crazy. We're not gonna keep ours at that for sure.

Oh, you wanna slow down time? Just getting a cold plunge. Hey, you look nice.

Oh, thanks. How do I look?

You look nice. All right.

In your dress clothes, slash everyday clothes.

Yeah, these are clean clothes.

In you I saw who I could be.

So how refreshing was that?

Oh, so refreshing.

3 sauna sessions, 3 cold plunge— no, 4 sauna sessions, 3 cold plunge sessions.

Yeah.

Feel rested?

Yeah.

Hungry? I do.

I'm ready for a dinner.

Downtown.

Here's one on marriage, babe.

Marriage is just like sitting in a bathtub. Once you get used to it, it ain't so hot. If you're talking about the secret to a happy marriage, you might say life is simpler when you plow around the stump. Plow around the stump. Derek wanted to know what factors came into play when we decided to have children. Wouldn't say anybody's ever ready.

No, I mean, honestly Honestly, it was kind of like I was getting older and I really wanted more than just a couple kids, and so I was like—

How old were you when we started?

I was 25, I think, when we started trying.

Yeah, it's nice in downtown today, isn't it?

It is.

It's nice and warm, but not too warm.

Not too bad.

Calm. Urban American Homestead: How did I ask the beautiful one on a date? I don't know if I remember asking you on our first date. You might remember that, but When I first asked you out, we were on that youth group. We were on the youth group at Snowbird Mountain in Boone, North Carolina. We were skiing.

Nope.

Well, we were snowboarding. And we were on the chairlift. Nope. And I got up the guts and I said, what did I say?

I said, do you want to go out sometime?

The Pedaling Bar. Do you want to go out sometimes? That's what I ended up saying. I think that's what you said. Wait, no, that was the first time.

Oh, okay.

I tried to ask you out and you were like, sure. And I thought we were dating after that question, but we weren't. So later, January, I said, do you want to go out?

And you said yes.

Can't add some time on it?

It's so funny because we had been asked earlier if we were dating, and I was like, no, because we're such good friends, we don't want to ruin it. That's funny. Because we were afraid. I guess I was afraid that then we would break up.

So I asked you out on speed up. We said every January 23rd was when we got engaged— started dating. We said We're gonna go to that ski lift every January 23rd, and we've been doing it ever since, kids or no kids.

We're thinking about going back this year. We did talk about it.

Maybe we should go around the dating anniversary. We should.

I was thinking that we could. We could go like Tuesday to Friday.

Nancy Taylor says, what has been the most trying time in our relationship? I don't— you just said said it'd be interesting to see what I would say. I'm going to be interested to see what you say.

I think it was when we first had kids.

I was going to say that.

That was the hardest.

Jonah, year one. It was very hard because we had been a while without having kids.

Yeah.

And you add that kid, it's about each other, and then you have that kid and it's all about them.

Yeah.

You're so stressed out because it's your first kid and you think they're gonna die and you don't know what you're really doing. Broke our selfish bubble more than marriage. Yeah, and then I mean, that's what kids do, just trying to figure out something difficult together.

And where as the mom, I like, I'm caring for the child, but then also I need to still have this relationship.

Yeah, and then I lose you and then I don't get all the attention.

Yeah, so it's tough. I was gonna say that was definitely the hardest.

It almost would have been better to start having kids right away, huh?

Yeah, because then you're not like in because we were in our own—

if I had to do it again, or if I was selfish to encourage or hope for our children, for our children, I guess looking back I would, I would hope and be excited for them if they got married and then had kids pretty soon after.

Well, I think still it's wise probably to wait a little bit just because you have to figure out marriage. I wouldn't want to figure out marriage and be pregnant at the same time because there's so many hormones and stuff. So I feel like waiting a little bit in there and like, so, you know, getting married and then like figuring out marriage somewhat because, you know, there is— there's— that's a learning curve. And then you then have a baby. So I guess don't get too comfortable in marriage.

Cheers! Green tomatoes. Bread. I got the steak. I got the chicken. Chicken is very juicy. How'd they get it that juicy? They cooked yours well. Medium rare. Nice. For dessert, what is that?

It's the key lime trifle.

Yeah, of course I got the chocolate. Okay, are you well satisfied? Well fed? Well rested?

Oh gosh, yes. I'm ready. I'm ready to go to bed. I'm so rested.

Yeah.

It was good.

Anyway, just go ahead and put the kids to bed. We'll see them in the morning. And we are back with one more question. We're going to where the answer to this question was, and that is—

Come back. You can't see it.

Is it sticky? No. Is it smooth?

Is it sticky?

No. She panicked there.

What is that?

The floors are done. It's nice and shiny. We have to cover it tomorrow. The Urban American Homestead said wanted to know where I proposed. And the reason I bring you over here is because I proposed about right there. I mean, this was just a shell. Yeah, this was just framed. And I knew I wanted to live in this barn when I got married. And so, yep, I cooked you a meal, we started a fire even though it was in June.

It was May 8th.

May. I remember you're like, why are we making a fire?

No, you kept saying we should make a fire, and I was I was like, why? It's so hot.

And then I got down on my knees and said, will you marry me?

And I said yes.

I wish we could walk on that floor because— You totally can. 23 years ago.

Come on, do it.

This is what happened 23 years ago. I still got it.

Walk me through the door.

Wow, this is a legacy house, y'all. It's where this family began.

It is.

Every day, Rebecca, you get closer and closer to matching the spirit of that legacy.

That's right.

Be a lot of family community happening in here.

A lot of family gatherings.

Yeah, a lot more beginnings in here. A lot more ends. Hosting weddings, hosting funerals. We wouldn't have bought this floor Yeah, you and I went to— now we got stories, don't we? Went to Tennessee in one day. And remember when we got these— this wood off the land with the horse logs? Horse logging that walnut too. You know who got that stuff, right? The poplar trim? Yeah, but we helped him. Andrew got it when we cleared the acre.

All of that wood that—

oh, it's out. Everyone— a good story though. No, that's a good story too. We got some of it out with the loggers, so a lot of the walnut— that was a successful day. It was on our golden anniversary, meaning 23 years on the 23rd of the month. Happy day.