Jill Winger on Horses, Questioning Everything and Opting Out

Jill and Christian Winger. We're jumping right into it. Okay, guys, how are you serving the world? Best serving the world 15 years ago. You could do some math, take your time.

We just got married.

Oh, I was an electrician.

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, I was a vet tech.

So we were vet tech. What does a vet tech look like?

Um, I would help with surgeries. I would go and help Craig check cattle, test bulls. So I was—

Test bulls?

Yes.

Like for semen count?

Yes.

Do you know how they test bulls?

I don't know, but I have a feeling that I know.

It might not be rated for the podcast.

We're starting out hot here. We're starting out hot.

What kind of thing is this podcast?

This isn't the Joe Rogan Show. Look it up on—

Yeah, maybe don't. Be careful of your search terms.

I'm pretty sure I know how did they do it. And I'm still in disbelief about it.

I wonder why you quit that. Went into homesteading.

I thought that she was actually really good at it. Oh, you know she was.

How do you know? How do you know, Kristin?

Because the vet. We had a whole thing.

You never went and watched.

Is the vet that is your vet the vet you used to work for?

That's funny.

Same one.

So yeah, but I liked it. I didn't ever go to school for it, so I just asked for a job. You know, no kids, needed another income. So what else do you do with your life? You don't have children, you go work. So I just asked for a job and they gave me a job and taught me. You know, as we went. So it was fun. I'm glad I did it.

Were you homesteading at that time?

I had no— and not when we started. I had towards the end as I knew we were going to start trying to have a kid and I started like that's when my awakening happened. And I remember the last few months of working at the vet clinic, I would be reading all these blogs and homesteading books, you know, at home. And then I would come to the vet clinic. I remember like prepping dogs for surgery, like fantasizing about making yogurt. I was super It was super weird. So anyway, it was at the tail end. Anyway, it kind of crossed over.

Yeah.

So is that why you quit the vet, or were you already on your way out?

I was on— we were on our way out. I knew I wanted to stay at home with, with our first baby.

Oh, you were having a baby?

We were trying to get pregnant, and then we got pregnant, and I was like, yeah, I want to stay.

I'm done.

I'm done.

What made you want to stay home with the baby?

Um, at that point, like, so I had a stay-at-home mom, and so that was kind of the only thing I'd ever considered, and you know, I was making $11 an hour and I drove 30 minutes. So just financially, it made zero sense to pay for daycare. And I always knew that, like, if we're gonna have kids, I wanted to stay home.

That was part of the plan.

Yeah.

And you guys were living in Wyoming?

Yes, we were living on the same place that we were living where you are now. It was— looked different, very, very different.

Are you both born in Wyoming?

No, I was born in Wyoming. Jill's from northern Idaho, so Yeah.

Okay. Sometimes I hear a Christian call a root a rut. Is that a ruffy thing? A rough?

Yeah. A rut.

Like a root.

Root.

Root.

Oh, root. Like a root cellar.

There you go.

Yeah.

That's a Wyoming thing.

I thought it was just a New England thing.

Oh, is it?

Yeah. When we were in Minnesota, they said—

I said, wait, is he from Canada?

Yeah.

It's also Canadian.

My sister said ever since I moved to Wyoming, She's like, you've got a— every so often you say something that sounds really like mid— like Midwest Wisconsin. And I'm like, oh, I did not— did not know that about myself, but it must be some crossover. I don't know.

So you were home, you, you, you got the homestead bug, you're quitting this thing, you're going to go work. Were you okay with that, Christian?

We hadn't bought our place yet.

No, we—

when you—

we had— no, we had— we were renting. Yeah, we bought the place, um, I worked with that clinic for 2 years, about halfway through bought the place? Because I remember we were both working our 9-to-5s.

We were shopping for a place that whole time. Since really the day we got married, we started looking for our own place. But we had a long list of things that we had to meet. You know, we just didn't want the corner place that had been subsidized or, you know, subdivided rather. We didn't want HOAs. We didn't want covenants. We didn't want, you know, we wanted to live somewhere where we were truly free and had full autonomy over our property, which is— but we didn't know it or not, it's not hard in Wyoming. Yeah, it is, because unless you want a $20 million ranch, those you can find, but everything, you know, right outside your major cities, if you can call it a major city in Wyoming, has still been subdivided. So they've taken bigger ranches and then divide them down into 20-acre or 40-acre plots, and then it's like HOA-ish, totally. Which we were absolutely— I was adamantly against. I mean, I don't know, we knew enough about each other that early in our relationship to really know, you know, if I knew I had Jill's full backing on that. But I really wanted somewhere where it was just raw like this. There's no rules.

I don't imagine HOA when I think of Wyoming.

I know, I don't either.

Well, that's the thing, suburbia, you know, there's so many big ranches that obviously don't have HOAs, and then there's Anything right around China.

So it's hard to find like an in-between.

It is.

It's not like, yeah, it's like either $20,000 or like a 40-acre HOA.

And that's even now, like I always look at real estate just for fun and it's still rare. It stands out to me when I find that obscure amount of acreage. It's not 40 acres, not 5 acres, and it doesn't have covenants and it has an old farmhouse. Like that's kind of rare. It always catches my attention.

Yeah.

So it was just— yeah.

Is Wyoming cowboy country?

Certain parts of it are very cowboy country. You think of, or I think of, like Cheyenne as being cowboy country, and I don't know that I would say that. It's the home of the Daddy of 'Em All, which is the world's largest outdoor rodeo. And at a time, I think maybe there was more cowboy-type stuff in Cheyenne, but it's It's more of a railroad town, an Air Force town now. You know, there's some industrial farming and stuff that goes on around Cheyenne, but—

Is Wyoming the most, the cowboy state of all America?

Is it?

Is it the cowboy state?

Does that have to be on the license plate?

No, it's the equality state.

Or is it Colorado?

It's the equality state.

It's the equality state.

Interesting.

What about Texas? Are there more, more cowboys in Texas?

No. No.

There's only 500,000.

There's only 500,000 people in Texas.

Per capita.

Per capita. Why? What happened to Texas? Why isn't Texas the— Okay, come on. I thought you maybe had a beef with Texas.

It's a different type of cowboy.

You can get into the beefs this early on.

It's a different type of cowboy. I mean, you have a lot of—

Oh, tell me about the different kind of cowboys.

Well, there's like, they're regional. Types of cowboys. There's the buckaroo that follow the Vaquero tradition that are more California, right? And then you have the Texans, like they rope different, their hats are different.

Okay.

Some of the methods are different.

Very interesting.

So you can tell?

Oh, you can tell.

I would not be able to tell.

Would I be able to tell?

Yeah, you could tell.

Like, I mean, if I like trained it, I guess.

If you were trained, yeah.

If you were trained, you wouldn't go to a—

I wouldn't go to a rodeo and be like, oh, that's Texas.

You wouldn't go on the rodeo tour and figure out—

and then you have rodeo cowboys, which is kind of its own. I mean, sometimes they'll cross over into the other genres, but they're kind of their own So like if a Texan comes to a Wyoming branding with rubber on his horn, like he has his saddle horn wrapped in rubber for roping, like that can cause some problems with— because the other cowboys like will do mule hide and longer ropes. So Texans have short ropes and like a Wyoming cowboy will have usually a longer rope. They're just different. It's kind of funny. They take a lot of pride in that. So very interesting.

Have you guys ever bull-rided?

No. I rode a steer out of a— a bucking chute.

But how'd you do?

Not very good. I don't die, but that means I want my kids to be—

so do you— are you scared your kids will grow up to be cowboys?

No, no, I, I—

yeah, not at all. I mean, I want them to grow up to have that. It's great cowboy mindset.

Yeah.

What's the cowboy mindset? 3, 3 parts.

Oh gosh, go.

We aren't live, you can take your time on this.

So the cowboy mindset is I think it's a lot of like a homesteader mindset. Like it's resilience, it's grittiness. It's not seeing yourself as a victim and taking high amounts of personal responsibility for your life and for the things that are in your care.

What about peeing outside?

That is, that's definitely a thing.

Is that good for a cowboy?

I pee outside more than I pee inside.

I thought so too. And I went to an RV park on the Great American Farm Tour. We're in Wyoming on the way to Yellowstone Lake. No, we weren't.

We were in Montana.

And, uh, Montana. Rebecca goes inside.

No, it was out of Cody. We were near Cody.

That's Wyoming.

Yeah, is that not Wyoming? That's cowboy country. Okay, Rebecca goes inside to pay, I go outside of the bus, you know, I'm on the other— I'm on the edge of the parking lot, which is gravel, and I go around, nobody's around, and I pee. Is that okay? Is that okay in Wyoming? Yeah, I thought so too.

Did you get in trouble? He got in trouble.

Well, I came back around from the bus. Yeah, and this woman just starts yelling at me, grilling at me. You pee outside that?

You pee in my parking lot?

You don't have a bathroom in there? And I apologize profusely.

Hey, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You're right. I'm sorry. Yes, I have a bathroom. I'm so sorry. I apologized profusely. And I hoped and prayed it was over. And really didn't think anything of it. Until Rebecca comes out of the office fuming. What happened in there, Rebecca?

She was like, whose rig is that out there?

And I'm like, Rebecca has no idea what happened.

A lot of people in the office. Not a lot, like 4 other family people who had just pulled in and were like, we were all checking in. And she's like, the white one. And I'm like, oh, that, that's us. And I have Jonah and Josiah with me in there, okay? And, um, and she's like— so I'm like, okay. And I like come forward and she's like, your husband was peeing. I mean, so she was like acting like she was gonna like talk low with me, so I like come in and then she like yells it out for everyone. And I'm like, your husband was peeing in the in the parking lot. And I'm like, yeah, um, I'm in here and he's his own person. Like, I don't control his mom.

I don't control it.

And long story short, we did not stay at that RV park.

You came out fuming. We're having this discussion like, what do we do? You know, it's kind of hard to find an RV park right here in Wyoming. What do we do? And, and here comes a man. Here comes a man out here.

Yes.

And ends up apologizing for Come to find out, he's like, I'm her third husband. But anyway, I shouldn't have peed in the parking lot, but I thought, you know, she didn't see me. She just saw the urine under the bus, right? She saw that part.

Yeah.

So it's not like it was flashing.

She's just so embarrassed. And the boys were so embarrassed.

Most cowboys would be all right.

I feel like people have been peeing outside longer than they've been peeing inside.

Especially a bus.

You know, if you go back in history, it's not like anything new.

I wish we would have thought of that. Actually, history is on our side, not yours. Yeah, no, but we actually went down to an RV— we went further down closer to Cody, and, um, it was a better RV park. There was a pool.

Yeah, the kids—

it turned out nice.

Yeah, so back to different kinds of cowboys. So you guys come here, we're just— we just got back from the The Homesteaders of America. It's kind of a wreck in our house, Rebecca. You know, Henry wouldn't go to sleep last night, so we just tore apart everything. And, and even before you came, I'm like, kids, clean up the porch. We don't want to look like a bunch of rednecks. And when you guys came here, I'm like, uh, I don't want you guys— we're going to take pictures after we get it all cleaned up so you guys don't think we're a bunch of hillbilly rednecks. I was trying to clarify. Yeah, so there are different kind of rednecks. Yeah, and imagine there are rednecks in Wyoming.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, for sure.

Are there rednecks, and then are there redneck cowboys, and then are there cowboys?

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

So you can be a cowboy and not a redneck?

There's what I consider to be cowboys and then real cowboys.

Yeah, who are the real cowboys?

Redneck cowboys are the ones that you're like, wannabe cowboys.

Yeah, you can tell like even just in town, like they're more rural-minded, but they're still not cowboy cowboys, like they wear boots and Wranglers and they have a hat on. But you can just tell. I could, in a crowd, I could tell you exactly who can ride a horse and who can't just by the way they're dressed.

You can tell. You know, you can tell they don't have any experience with rural.

Can you tell if we can ride a horse?

I mean, judging by how you're, how you dress, I would say no. Is that a fair judgment?

Let's talk. Let's define the horse.

Oh, because I've ridden a horse. Yeah, I've ridden a horse. We could give you maybe 10 times and fallen off 4 times.

That count?

We can give you a horse that you couldn't ride.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I grew up riding horses, but I don't— I didn't love it. Like, it scared me. Like, I was, I was afraid. And so, like, I was afraid to, like, make it run. And I was like, I think we'll just walk, you know? Like, and it wasn't— it was an old horse. It was like a 23-year-old horse, you know? So it wasn't It wasn't gonna buck me off or anything.

So let's do this test then.

I can ride one, but it'd be the one that Christian's like, you can ride it.

It's the wooden rocking horse in the corner.

Are we hillbillies, rednecks, or country people?

I would say country people.

Or hippies.

I would say country people. Yeah, that's why, I mean.

I would say country, I would consider you country.

So you can be country and not a redneck?

Yeah.

That's why I like the homestead title, because I feel like the homestead is kind of that other category. It's not super redneck, necessarily. I mean, everything crosses over if you want it to, but it's not industrial farmer. That's why I've always been like, this is a nice little in-between thing.

Yeah, yeah. We don't look like we can ride horses, Justin.

We better get some horses before the next 5 years, before they come back.

Come on out. Come on out. We have more horses now since you were there last time.

Oh, really?

We'll hook you up. Yeah.

Yeah.

My kids want to ride horses so bad, especially after we were at your house. They're like, Mom, please. And I was like, I dragged my feet.

And I think you guys have the definite potential because you're animal people. And that's— there's a very big line, and it's another line that you can see in the homesteading world where some people have no animal feel, you know. And a lot of people will look at a horse and they think that a horse is like a side-by-side, right? I think that you can get on a horse just because I've got his reins like he's a mechanical machine now, and I can just push a button and make him go where I want, make him do what I want. And that's not reality. That horse has got a brain and a heartbeat just like you and I do, and he's got his own wants and his own desires. And some days he wakes up grumpy, but he's no different than a cow, he's no different than a dog, he's no different than a pig. And so if you can recognize and read the animals, that gives you a leg up, so to speak, in the horse world, because the horse world is no different. You've got to be able to develop a relationship with that animal. Now, the interesting thing is, is there are a lot of push-button horses out there that have been trained and basically beaten into the ground, you know, to make them mechanical, which she would probably talk about more than I would. But it's the same thing in animals. It's, you know, cows or anything else.

So I think there is also the line between big animals and small animals.

Oh yeah.

You know, I mean, like, I think sometimes when people are like, I want to get a cow, but they have no big animal experience. I think about the first time we got cows, like, he has— I had horse experience, but again, it was like fear-based. Like, I was a fearful child. And then Justin had a lot of cow experience growing up. So like, we brought the cows home and I was like, they're yours.

Well, and that's what's fascinating. If you watch somebody work with small animals, goats or something. If you let that goat get away with certain habits, even though it's small, yeah, that goat is pushing that person around. Yeah, in a way, you know, physically the goat's not big enough that it can push you around, but he's in his own way, he's pushing somebody around. He's— and so, or a dog, you know, you got good dogs, you got bad dogs, and there are dogs that sit outside and bark all day long, or they're jumping on your furniture or jumping on you. That's that animal's way of pushing against you. And if that person can't learn to manage that, then you, you upgrade into a bigger animal and now you have problems because now the cow is physically big enough that it can push you around and run you over. Or a horse. Horses are even smarter. Yeah, I hate to say that because she's sitting next to me, but horses are even smarter. And so now they learn, they're like a dog, you know, they're like a healer. That healer— we've got healers, and those, those healers will test you every day of their life. They just push and push and push. Even a well-trained, behaved healer will just constantly test you because they're smart. And a horse is the same way. The horse is like, hey, what can I get away with today? And so you get on the horse and you want to go for a ride. Well, that horse is like, hey, I want to push on you here, I want to push on you there. And if the person can't recognize that and interpret that and correct that, then—

so how does somebody get that, that touch that you talk about? Being able to handle an animal like that.

A lot of the guys I've worked with say you can't— they call it feel, and they say you can't teach feel.

Wow.

And I think it's just, you just have to do it, and you're gonna mess some stuff up. Like, I've made plenty of horses dull. Oh yeah, like many. And I've messed up dogs. Messing up a dog right now as we speak.

You can't— you may not be able to teach feel, but that doesn't mean it can't be learned.

It can be learned.

It just has to— it's something you have to experience.

And it's not— it's not getting a donkey first. That's not the plan. Or a mini horse, I would say, or a goat first.

Yeah, I, I think honestly it's working with somebody who can recognize those things. So even if it's a small animal like a goat, if you're working with somebody who has animal knowledge and can see, hey, you're letting that animal push all over you, when you get into a bigger animal, you're going to have bigger problems.

So if you can correct it now, even with a small animal or with a dog, then Is that why I can walk up to my cows and other people can't?

Yes, sometimes.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And not only that, my cows will pick on other people, but your animals can read you just like you can read.

Well, and I think our bull does that to me. Like, he intimidates me.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Like, I'll be like in there doing the minerals and he starts walking towards me and I'm like, oh, you know, like, I mean, he's a bull. So there's a lot of respect. He knows. That I'm like, you can have the right of way. I'll let you because you're way bigger than me.

You got to go in there like you own it.

I know, but I'm not— I don't deal with him enough.

We're not talking about being violent. We're talking about just owning it.

I know, but I don't deal with him enough, like, and I don't want to.

How would somebody overcome that fear? I'd be scared to death to get close to a horse.

It's experience again.

It's just— yeah, I think with horses especially, because we, we mentioned, I think last night we're talking about homesteaders getting horses. And I think of all the animals you're going to add to a farm, you need to have an experienced mentor with the horses. Like, you can kind of fudge your way with goats and maybe even a milk calf. You kind of have some experience. A horse, there's— they're a little bit different. And I think getting lessons and having a horse person help you is really key because I see that all the time. People, I want to add a horse to the homestead. I'm like, I love action, I love like jumping out of the plane and building the parachute on the way down, but a horse, get some help with that one.

Okay, help me out. So We had horses growing up. Uh, I fell off.

You fell off a lot.

3 or 4 times and just got terrified.

Yeah, but you were also a scared child.

Like, one— I guess one part of my question is, when, when you're breaking— we're trying to break this one horse— uh, do you get back on? Is that the— is that the method? You get cucked off, you should get immediately back on? Well, correct.

Within— yeah, with— I would say For the most part, yes. There are instances where that horse maybe bucked you off so violently that you need to have someone else help you before you just get on and get that happening again.

Groundwork with that horse before you just jump back on.

But what's the groundwork?

Well, it's just working with that animal that's— and you're not on his back, so you're still working with a flag or with a lead rope or something.

So how does somebody overcome? Okay, so there's fear there.

But if you take that back a second and you go, if you don't get back on that horse or you don't at least continue to work with that horse, You've positively reinforced in that horse's mind that what I did was okay, and they will learn that, and they're going to learn that. So it's not ever a cow, or it's no, you know, if a bull pushes you around and shoves you into a corner and you don't figure out a way to correct that situation, now he knows, hey, I'm not the superior one here anymore. I'm not, you know, or you're not the superior one.

Yeah, he's always looking.

And so, yeah, I mean, that's what's fascinating. You can take somebody, say, on a homestead where you've got 1 or 2 cows or 10 cows And then you take somebody and put them in a pen where there's 200 cows or 200 cows and 200 calves, and we want to sort all the calves off those cows. Now that— now it's where those dynamics really become amplified. And so now I literally want me to do that job, Christian.

So I can come visit you. Don't put me on that job.

Put you in the middle of the pen.

I got a spot for you on the fence. You can watch, but you can, you know, it's As an example, one of, one of my favorite things to do is when we're AIing our heifers, we'll, when we're heat detecting them, so we'll pull out the ones that are in heat and put them in a separate pen. Well, they're all in there together, so there might be 50 of them and there's 6 that are in heat, and I want somebody to pull those 6 out of that group of 100. Wow. It takes some pretty good skill to do that. We're not doing it on horseback because it's in a real small pen. So now you literally can stand in that pen and manipulate a herd of 100 cows by just inches and your body language and how you're carrying your energy and how you're moving around. It's fascinating.

So the other thing is, is, you know, we talk about putting up boundaries with animals and not being fearful, and that's a piece of it. But the other piece is these— a lot of these animals are so extremely sensitive, like we don't even realize how much data they're picking up off of us. And so like with my horses, even I started working with a guy a couple of years ago and he just kind of reminded me I was, I was taking a lot of that for granted. And as I started to become more aware of just around my horses, or now it's, I'm also seeing with my dogs and my cows and the chickens, the littlest things, breathing in and out a certain way, the way you shift your shoulders, the way you hold your body, how fast or slow you move. Um, they pick up on all that. And if an animal is dull, it's because the human's usually taught them to be dull and they compensate for our sloppiness a lot. So that's another thing with the horse is like what you can, you can have a dog that you've taught bad habits to without even realizing it. And it's, it's not the end of the world. A horse, it can kill you if you know.

Yeah.

So there is more at stake there.

But yeah, Teddy's bad habits aren't going to kill me.

And I have, I have very, we have lots of dogs with bad habits.

Yeah.

It's like, okay, well it's annoying, but yeah, it's fine.

So when you're standing in these 200 calves, how tall are they or how much do they weigh?

Oh, probably around 1,000 pounds.

What? And you're standing there?

Yeah. Oh yeah.

And somebody who didn't know what they was doing, they would get killed. They would be put down in the order and a steer would dominate them.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know that it would happen immediately because when you, you know, my cows obviously know me and so we get in there and we've established a relationship with them and so they're not real surprised.

Okay.

If you take some cows And that's one of the, you know, that's part of the program that we use with our calves and our heifers as we're raising them anyway. We want them to be used to us. We don't want them to get in a pen or in the corral where we've got to work with them, and then we get in there with them and they're freaked out and they're running all over the place and trying to break out and whatever, or trying to run us over. We don't want that. So yeah, we spend a fair amount of time just so that they're used to us being around. But if you took somebody who was completely inexperienced They're gonna, you know, they're gonna test you a little bit, you're testing them a little bit, and it's like this dance. And before long, they're gonna figure out this guy doesn't know what he's doing, or, you know, they're gonna figure out, hey, I know what I'm doing. And next thing you know, they wouldn't be able to get those 6 cows out without— and keep the other ones in there.

Do you have a staff or a flag or something?

A lot of times we'll use a flag or, you know, just a sorting stick.

Okay.

But like I say, if you're good, two of us can go through and pull those six out.

No problem.

There's nobody runs. They're going to match your energy. So if I come in and I'm worked up and I'm freaked out and I'm carrying a tremendous amount of energy into the situation, or if I'm— you may have heard the jokes about people working cows. They get all mad and start yelling and screaming and cussing and stuff like that. I mean, if you carry that kind of energy into that, the cows are going to give you that kind of energy in return.

Yeah.

Or me and the guy that I run cows with, we could literally— or Jill, or, you know, whatever, somebody who has experienced— we go in there and we can sort those 6 cows out, or however many out, and you're barely even moving. And those cows are just milling around, and it's like they don't even know what's— what took place. And so it's beautiful to see that on that skill. That's a skill that You know, I think it's something that could be taught even, even to a deeper degree, even at the homestead level. You know, I think you get, we'll call them a backyard homesteader or somebody who just runs out and gets goats or runs out and gets their first milk cow and doesn't have any animal husbandry experience. You know, there's, there's a lot more to it than just making sure the animal's got clean water and fresh food. You know, you've got to be able to establish that relationship with that animal and be able to trust the animal around you and trust the animal around your kid. Be able to interpret it. Yeah, because I could take that same herd of cows, and if I'm calving now and I've got one who's in a tremendous amount of pain, that cow's gonna react and treat me way different. You know, that cow 2 hours ago might have looked at me as, hey, he's the boss and I'm going to heed wherever he's at, to now she's in a tremendous amount of pain, she doesn't know what's going on, she's in labor, and she's going to mow you down. And you've got to be able to interpret that difference.

Yeah, that's true.

So And you could have the same thing on a homestead. You could have your family milk cow who is trying to calve and is calving a calf that is breeched or, you know, sitting down and is backwards or something like that and physically in a position she can't get it out. And if you don't know how to interpret that energy, you maybe, maybe not even at the vet level of interpreting what's going on with the pregnancy, but interpret or being able to interpret her and say there's something really wrong here and she, she means business now. So where I would have just run in there and thrown a leg over or, you know, played with the kids or whatever, now, yeah, we're gonna have to treat her and respect this situation totally differently.

We got a dog because of y'all. Y'all, your dogs follow your kids around.

Yeah, yeah.

This one, he won't.

He doesn't fight. He likes Rebecca.

Something that we learned maybe the hard way was just another method of interpreting energy was when we got our first Mastiff. Yeah, because that— we'd always been used to working around working dogs like a healer, and so they interpret the energy differently from a cow or from a horse or whatever than a guard dog. So that healer would see, you know, an animal doing something, or maybe even would see me reacting to an animal doing something that I don't want it to do, and the healer want to circle around and be like, okay, this cow's trying to get out the gate, or this horse is trying to get out the gate. We need to stop it. Where the guard dog breed would be like, that horse is trying to get out. We need to kill it.

Kill it. Yeah.

Or we need to kill the calf, or we need to kill the dog, or kill whatever, because they just interpret that energy so much differently. And then it's amplified. Like I say, those animals are watching you to see what your energy level is. And so we would be sort of reckless and maybe just sloppy in our energy and the cow dog would forgive us for that because I might get excited. Like, hey, you're yelling because the cow is trying to get out the gate. Somebody go over there and do something about it. Well, now the guard dog interprets that energy as there's something seriously wrong here.

That's a good point.

And there's somebody's life is on the line. Life is in danger. So we had to figure out how do we back our energy way down when that animal or that dog was around.

That was a big lesson. I remember that dog taught us a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Back to your cow thing, the— you can't get between— if a calf's over— mama, new calf's over here and mama's here, she don't care if you're standing right in the middle. She'll plow you down. Yeah. It's like she doesn't even see you, right? She's got a mind—

she'll see you as a threat.

So you got to be intuitive. You gotta You got to—

like when our kid— we're— when we're calving and we're tagging our calves, so we try to catch them within 24 hours of being born so we can put a tag in their ear that identifies them basically to their mom.

Will a mom plow you down?

Sure, sure, sure. There's some cows out there, there's some cows that we have that we just know, you know. So we're like, oh, there's red tag over here, you got to watch her. Or maybe what it takes is two of us out there somebody to act as the bait and keep the cow busy while somebody else circles.

You go out there and help, Jill?

Yeah, I will sometimes.

Have you guys ever been plowed down?

Oh, for sure. Not necessarily in the point that— I mean, you just, you got to be smart about what you do.

You haven't been in—

He has one little thing. Last time I went out with him, they have it all there. They do a lot in the Ranger. So he'll drive up on the calf. The Ranger kind of keeps going. He jumps out, does the tag real quick, and then jumps right back in the Ranger with the door never shutting.

So you're always— You got to be fast.

Yeah, real fast. Ninja.

For those that don't know, I know y'all have a ranch in Wyoming and it's— how many head of cattle do you have?

About 200.

Okay, nice. Let's talk about fear and horses. So I think one of my problems was this was the same time that Superman— yeah, we're going way back. This is some trauma. Help me dig it out, guys. I gotta get past this because it's a long time ago. Uh, it was when Superman, Christopher Reeve, had just simply fallen off a horse and broke his freaking neck.

Yeah.

How likely is that?

I mean, it can happen.

It's not like a surfer getting bit by a shark.

Yeah.

You don't really have to kind of worry about it.

I've seen some pretty bad wrecks where people just stand up and walk away. Like I haven't bucked off. You would be amazed at how resilient people are after they hit the ground. But that being said, sometimes a very benign wreck can cause— I mean, you just land wrong. So it is always a risk. And I sometimes I think about it, like I'll be up there and, you know, your imagination is—

What do you think about? Where do you go?

Do you— I mean, I would think about it.

She thought about it right after our first child was born.

That.

Yeah.

Because she was riding colts at that time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Training them. And it wasn't that big a deal. And then all of a sudden we have our first kid. Yeah. Sitting in a car seat right outside the arena, you know, and she's like, and I'm not there. I'm at work.

Yeah.

So what happens if she falls off and gets hurt and can't raise the kid?

Did it cripple you or did it?

I mean, no, I've had those thoughts. It has never crippled me. But like, even now I have a colt. I just have one colt that's mine. And sometimes he gets silly because he's a baby, you know, and he'll buck a little bit or he'll rear a little bit. And I have to like, I have to talk myself through it because if I— he is so sensitive, so I've made him sensitive that if I go like this, he goes like this. And then he gets more like that. And I can, I can literally create a problem. And that's what a lot of people don't realize. Oh, my horse bucked me off, stupid horse. I'm like, no, no, you, you set that up to happen. I'm sorry. I mean, that people don't want to hear that. That kind of stings. Like, I didn't cause that. Yeah, you did actually cause that. And so any problem I've had with that horse was generally I— my subconscious, my body was creating that. So I went and I've gotten help with them and it's helped a ton. And just, it is a mental game though with anything. I mean, I think most things we do in life are mental games, but horses are, you know, a little bit—

there's risks, the risk in everything we do. I mean, yeah, you could get hurt on a trampoline or you can get hurt walking across the street and slip on people's ice and fall and break your neck, or, you know, I mean, it's You just kind of have to just wrestle with it from a standpoint of— I literally— you could literally get hurt doing anything.

What was the last time you guys were scared?

First thing that comes to your thought.

Maybe it doesn't even have to be the last time, but maybe the most memorable.

From like a ranching standpoint or something like that.

It can be anything. I mean, we were scared to death to go on the Great American Farm Tour. Yeah, it could be anything.

Oh, I'm scared by the soda fountain. That's a little different type of thing.

Okay, so you started this business and the soda fountain, it's a financial type of fear.

Yeah.

Okay.

Is this right? Is this wrong? Are we going to fall on our face? Is everyone going to see us fall on our face?

That doesn't scare you so much, Christian. He's kind of like, I didn't have the financial side of it more.

It was more, can we fix everything in here that needs fixed? 100-year-old building that hasn't had anything done to it in a long time. So can we make all those repairs?

When you signed on to the soda fountain, which is not a business you guys are typically doing, I mean, you came from the blogging space. We'll get to that in a little bit.

But you—

that was scary. It was scary signing that, taking— did you take on debt for it? Were you able to pay cash? But you would lose that cash.

Yeah, it was a big chunk of cash.

And you might— and, and probably getting it started, you're putting more cash into it.

Yes.

Until it finally evens out, hopefully pays you back.

And especially when you look at it from the outside, and everyone told us this, this is also exacerbated it. Like, it looked ridiculously crazy, like insanity level, because the building is ugly as sin, like falling apart. The food is horrendous. There is no kitchen. It's in a town— there is no kitchen. Yeah, they had hot plates. They had George Foreman and microwaves, air fryers, or Fry Daddies. It was all residential cooking Or, and then in the summer they would cook on a regular barbecue outside. So they would run outside, flip a burger, run back in, run back out, flip a burger. So, I mean, it looked ridiculous. Like it didn't have a great reputation. It's a town of 200 people where like there's no population in it. Not a lot of employee base. So we knew in our gut we were supposed to do it, but to anyone outward, it looked like we were cutting our own throats and everyone made sure to let us know that that's what they thought of that. So that didn't help as we're already battling our internal voices.

That was just like a test of if you had a friend say, because we started, we didn't come from ranching background either.

Right.

We weren't born. Oh, you didn't? No, I was born right smack dab middle of the city. Really?

You're a city sickler.

Yeah.

You were not a cowboy?

No.

Neither one of us. Always had this dream of this is where I want to go and this is what I want to do. So I had this friend say, so you're not losing enough money in ranching, you know, because obviously ranching is not really known for making a lot of money.

So he's not making money in ranching.

So, well, we're getting to that point.

Yeah.

By retaining ownership of everything. But, you know, so anyway, he's like, so you're not losing enough money in ranching. You decided to go buy a restaurant too, huh?

What'd you say to him?

I'm like, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then everyone has to share. Well, my brother bought a restaurant. And it bankrupted them. My sister-in-law bought a restaurant and it ruined her life. And we're like, thank you, Bob, for all of your help and encouragement.

And where's she buying a restaurant in 2020? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. We also did that.

Okay. So if you guys hadn't bought the restaurant, if you hadn't bought the soda fountain, what would have happened to it? Do you know?

Right now it'd still be running, but it was an elderly couple that owned it. And I mean, as much as they, they were, they did a lot for the business. They owned it for 12 years. I mean, it'd been there for 100 years, so they'd owned it for a long— they'd only owned it for 12 years, but they had done quite a bit to bring it to where it was.

But still, a George Farming Girl though.

Yeah, I was going to say that they only had a certain amount of time before the health department comes in and says, listen, you either— even in Wyoming, even in Wyoming, dump a tremendous amount of money in this building to build a commercial kitchen or shut down.

So what I'm getting at with this is how do you— how did you face that fear? How did you get over that? Because you're afraid, but you still did it.

I, I kind of just like the fear of— I mean, that's— I had a coach tell me one time, he says anxiety means go.

Wow.

Because there's a lot of time— I mean, even before, you know, I might get anxious about something, I would— it just like caused you to freeze up a little bit, you know? You're like, yeah, it does. I'm scared of my shadow or whatever. And so that's always stuck with me. And that, I mean, that's just how I am. That's my energy. I'm like, let's go. I mean, if we're going to fight, we're going to fight. I think it gives you anxiety.

That means we're going to fight.

And there's a difference. People ask me that. I feel like you know in your gut the difference. There's like when they're the kind of maybe trepidation you feel when you're not sure if you should pick up a hitchhiker on the side of the road. That's a different type of fear than—

So do you pick them up, Christian?

No.

But I am on the fire department and I go out to a lot of wrecks where you're like, okay.

But there's just, it's just different. Like, you know, when it's something you want to do, but you're just like, you feel the wall of fear, you know, you know that.

There's a difference.

So maybe you're facing fears to do something good. Smart.

Yeah.

Even though maybe it's fearful. Although maybe picking up a hitchhiker might be good. Thank you, dear Lord.

I mean, it could, but it could also go really wrong. It could go really wrong.

Yeah.

Do you have a hitchhiker story? I mean, you can't drive around.

Every once in a while. Yeah, it's kind of cold for them.

I know, so I'm saying like, I don't think you guys probably have a large homeless population over there.

You don't drive around, you don't go 120 because you would be afraid. That would be kind of stupid.

I guess what I ask myself is, if I don't do this, will I regret it? Like, what will I always— like with the soda fountain, when I was like, if we didn't do this, my life would just go on its same little path and it would be really easy, but I would always, always wonder because I've had my eye on that soda fountain for 4 years. I would always wonder, what if I'd done it? What would have happened?

Has it been for sale for 4 years?

You've been thinking about it for a long time.

I've driven by it for 4 or 5.

And you would regret it that you hadn't already done it?

I would have regretted it. If I— I think I would have totally regretted it. Same with horses. Okay, so I get scared on a horse. You get scared? Yeah, sometimes I get scared on a horse.

Sometimes.

Yeah. If I go, okay, well, I'm going to give in to this and just like, done.

Let it do.

I hugely regret that. That would be a huge point in my life. And then if I let that fear get a foothold, that's gonna take— that's gonna have more power over me on the next thing. So I guess for me it's balancing regret versus pushing through it.

Hmm.

And I guess the first thing I would say is, well, what are you— what are you afraid of? Yeah, what does that fear rooted in, you know? And try to work through those things before to sign on the dotted line.

Did you guys work through some of those things before you signed for that building?

Yeah, I would say we had some conversation because truly we had some conversations about that building many years before we ever even got to the point where— because I was pretty much adamantly against it 5 years ago.

How did this conversation go down?

For folks that don't know, this is an old building in this little town. Yeah, in Wyoming. It's run down.

So Jill comes to Christian and says, I want to buy the soda fountain.

Yeah.

Christian says, are you crazy?

No.

How many years did you shut it down?

Well, I mean, we never had the opportunity to buy it, so it was more or less her—

oh well, I would love to do this on her vision board.

And it was literally, I mean, physically on her vision board. But I'm like, yeah, it's never going to happen, number one, and we're never going to do it, number two, because it just needs to be pushed into the ground and started over. You know, I'm like, it'd take way too much money to fix that place up. And then she says one day Hey, we should buy the soda fountain. And I'm like, great, why don't you call them? Because it wasn't actually listed.

You said great, why don't you call them?

Well, I was more or less joking.

I was going to say, what changed your mind?

Why don't you call them and see? And she's like, no, why don't you call them?

Did you?

Because that's how we roll.

She don't like to call.

She didn't want to call.

Yeah, you know, you're not a phone person. I hate phones. I hate phones.

But now once he gets on the phone, will you get on it? Once he gets them on the line, do you mean?

Yeah, then I was like, I came to meetings with him and stuff. It's not like I— yeah, I don't mind.

That's how I do breaks.

I need someone else to break the ice.

She won't call, she won't call, but as soon as they say hello, she's like, give me the phone. Yeah, I have to get them on the phone.

Yeah, I know.

And get the intro.

Yeah, he does.

Yeah, ice breaking.

Yeah, I have a hard time with the phone. I just, I struggle with it. Honestly, even texting sometimes I have a hard time.

So you get on the phone?

I actually called because I called when she wasn't around because just the anxiety of that sometimes is too much for her.

Wait, were you guys gonna do this for nostalgia hobby, or were you actually— are you actually trying to make money?

Everything we do, we make sure people— they're like, you have a lot of toys on the phone. I'm like, it's more strategic than you think. Like, we're doing things with an asset in mind. Or maybe, you know, we knew that a restaurant's not going to make you a millionaire in the first year, but we're like, this could be a place that would house our money. Real estate, you know, that's a put your money in, kind of keep it safe from inflation. Plus, we felt both really called to the community, like, how can we support this community? And that was like, what if we try this route? Because we know business. So this is using our giftings to help the community.

Well, and the Soda Fountain is a community relic. I mean, it's there. Yeah, for sure. I don't want to say necessity, but it is a, it is, it is a cornerstone of your community.

Yeah.

And people probably— Chugwater's most cherished asset, really. Wow.

And the Wingers.

And we're not, and we're not locals, so that's been interesting too.

I didn't think about that.

We're not born and raised there. He grew up 45 minutes away. I grew up 1,200 miles away. Um, but we were not born and raised, so that's been interesting too, to have people I feel like were nervous that they were entrusting this cornerstone, like you said, of the community to two kids who were not from there.

Yeah, but you guys have lived there for like over 10 years.

I mean, I feel like we have good relationships.

You are part of the community.

We had a relationship, but I guess you weren't born there. We were born there.

How, like, the majority of people in Chugwater then are like from Chugwater?

There's quite a few with, yeah, with—

not a lot of people are moving to Chug.

No, not— I mean, there's a few, uh, transplants, but there's definitely more great-grandpa homesteaders, so Here I am, like that kind of dynamic. Yeah.

So you, you, you, you, you mentioned earlier, you did, you say to follow your gut. So your gut clearly tells you not to pick up the homeless man as you're driving home from North Carolina to Wyoming. You're not picking anybody up. I know the gut has already decided.

Sorry, all the people who was trying to get a ride with them.

But the gut did say— what we're really trying to dig in here is how did we tell between what the gut's saying and this is a healthy and okay fear that I need to push through.

Yeah.

Uh, what's the gut sound like to you?

Um, to me it's excitement and yeah, excitement. It's, you just know. And I feel this, that's so ethereal and so not helpful, but there's just some, I just, there's things I've done and I've, I feel like the more you listen to your gut, cuz people, I, people ask me about this, the more you listen, the more in tune you get.

Yes.

The first thing I ever did that I listened to my gut cuz I was not trained to to do this. I was raised the opposite, that you actually don't believe your heart, you don't follow your heart, you don't listen to your gut. So the first time I ever did this was moving to Wyoming to go to the college and train horses for a living, 1,200 miles away. I was a shy homeschool girl and I just knew I was supposed to do this. And everyone tried to talk me out of it. They're like, you can't make a career in horses. Why are you moving so far away? Just stay here. But I just— it was almost like an out— not an out-of-body experience, but almost like I just did it. I'm just like, okay, I'm doing And then once I like, that was a good choice. Yeah, that was what I was supposed to do. And I just started. I've always listened to that. And that's what I mean, starting the blog and buying the homestead, the property we did, and now the soda fountain, starting the businesses. It's always led us down the right path.

Hmm. What was— you said you weren't raised to follow your gut. What was wrong with following your gut?

So I was raised in a super strict religious sect.

Christians over here.

I want to let her finish her sentence, but we're definitely going to address that. For those listening, you didn't see Christians look like, here we go.

Um, so I mean, it's really common in those belief systems that you're, you're taught, you know, your heart is deceitful above all things, so don't listen to it, don't follow that. Like, you should always basically, in essence— and I understand why they teach what they teach, I I'm not naive enough to think that it was an accident. But they teach you to look to your authority figures, which are usually people within the church, right, who are speaking in— they claim to be speaking for God. So that's a whole, that's a whole topic, you know, very extensive. But I was raised like, literally, um, listening to your gut is wrong. So it was— it's been a whole coming out process of like paying attention to that and, and teaching myself it's okay and it is valid and I think that's how God speaks to us, is through, you know, yeah, those pieces.

But that verse you quoted, the heart is deceitful above all things, isn't it talking about like sin?

I think so.

But it sounds like maybe it was getting a little further. There was a little bit of, uh, yeah, it's talking about manipulation, not going after sin. It's not necessarily a sin to go by— it's not a sin. It's not a sin to go buy soda fountain, right?

To move to Wyoming, right?

But somehow it got horses. Transferred over time.

Yes.

To include more of the gut feeling, to cancel all the gut feelings.

Yes.

Very interesting.

And that's the thing, it's taken out of context, I believe. I think the verse is great. I think it's been abused.

And it's easier to control somebody or manipulate somebody if, if you train them to not listen to what they're—

to what they think is right. I mean, I grew up in a religious context But you're definitely different than—

yeah, yeah, you.

I mean, like, you know, I feel like we— I, I knew that about you, but then once—

it's taken me a long time to identify those pieces, but it's been very interesting to be able to, you know, now pull myself back and look at it from outside looking in and go, oh wow, that was, that was more of a thing than I thought. Like, makes sense now.

So I would say that the people who, who would call on that verse, the heart is deceitful, might also be the people that would say when you have this transformation experience, you get a new heart.

Yes.

So then the heart wouldn't be— and that's—

I always wondered that because I'm like, well, I supposedly was, you know, with a born-again experience, so how does that— I always used to think, huh, well, I guess, you know, there's things you just— you learn not to question, right? Don't question, just, just roll.

That's also part of it.

That's also part of it. Just don't question.

Don't question.

It's fine, just go.

We're telling you the truth.

Yes.

Uh, when you said you learned, you learned not to question, I just have to go here. We're gonna have to back up to a lot of things here, but to question, well, then when did you first question?

I was like, I think I was like 25 or 26.

And what was the cause?

Um, it was a, I had started feeling disillusioned with the church for a while, just like feeling like there's something missing. And I was doing all the things even after we got married. We were checking off all the boxes like good people are supposed to do, and it just felt so empty. And it was almost as, as we started to kind of do some more personal development and kind of figure more things out, like, it's not like we ran away from the church and just went right over here to this personal development, because people like to say that happens, right? Like, they blame it on that. But it was like, this just felt so dead over here. And I kept going, why does it feel dead? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? There's something wrong with me. I'm not spiritual enough. I'm not I'm not reading my Bible enough. I'm not doing the right things. I'm not checking enough boxes off. I just felt so dead. And finally it was me in a roundabout way learning to acknowledge that, no, I think it is kind— there's pieces of it that are pretty dead. And I'm not saying that's true for everyone, but for us in our situation, it just— there, it was— there was nothing there.

That was when you were 25 years old?

Yeah.

What you said— how old are you?

36.

Okay, so 90-ish years ago. You are.

Yeah.

So did that coincide— was that going inside with your homestead journey and questioning conventional food and stuff like that.

I think it's— I think I've said before, the homestead is where it all— you, you question one thing, right? Yeah, that's right. The government says I shouldn't have raw milk, but I actually think I, I do want to have raw milk, right? So I'm going to push back against that. And that— I was a rule follower because, you know, very much a rule follower. Queen of the rule followers. Firstborn.

Yeah, queen.

And I like I prided myself. And so when I started the homesteading, I was like, my mantra was Jill is a rule follower. And then you go over with homesteading, you're not— you can't follow anymore.

And I—

so I started to go, maybe this is actually— this feels real good. I like this.

This is what felt good, breaking a rule.

Breaking the rule, like raw milk.

What was the rule? That was your first rule?

Like raw milk. And I'm gonna grow my food and I'm gonna compost things and I'm gonna like start not eating, you know, ramen noodles every day.

Christian's nodding his head now.

Okay.

And so when you were a queen rule follower. Like, there's the arrows in the parking lot. Did you always follow?

I would. Okay, I don't know if I would have gone— like, the, the arrows in the grocery stores these days, you would break that one. See, back then I probably would have broke that. Like, back then you speed?

Did you speed? No, not—

oh, I was like super like—

I know, I, I sped. I sped even though I was a queen rule. Yeah, like, I have a hard time also with the, the the arrows in the parking lot, I'm like, yeah, I really need to go over there and this is the best way, so I'm just gonna do it. Yeah, but it's not right.

I might have like fudged that a little bit, but yeah, yeah, that's hilarious.

So you're starting to— we're backing up in here in your life. It's good. You're starting to question the conventional milk, you're replacing it maybe with organic or wanting to grow your own, and, and then the medicine, right? Yeah, that's what was next for you.

Yeah, yeah, like natural medicine. Because it was always— my mom would just take us to the doctor. We had antibiotics all the time, and you follow the, the rules of, you know, FDA and all that. And so then I started to go, well, if I'm eating all this good food, but I'm— I don't want to take my kid, my baby, to the doctor to get antibiotics. And I start— so you read those blogs and those books, and they start to kind of weave in. So we started looking at herbs, and that's what got into essential oils. So I was questioning all those things and realizing, I guess, the biggest thing was life is not as black and white as I Right. And there's gray. That was the biggest lesson of that decade is there's gray and gray is okay. It's okay to sit in the gray. So then the next thing it led to, well, what about the system of the church? Like, what am I sitting in? It was because I was super black and white.

And the thing is, is those systems and organizations don't want you to believe that there's a gray area. Everything is black and white. Everything is black and white. You're here or you're here. There is no middle ground. You know, you either follow the rules, you don't follow the rules. You're either a sinner, you're not a sinner. I mean, it's until you start having the freedom to ask those questions that you realize, you know what, there's no clear answer to this. There's no way I can pick a black camp or a white camp. I'm somewhere in the middle here.

Well, where were you during all this? Were you a normal person?

I would say I was not the rule follower that she came from.

You weren't following rules. But were you normal?

Yeah, I was.

You were going with the society?

No, I wasn't that. I mean, even from us, even from the time I was like 6 or 7, I could see these different organizations in the world that I just didn't want to be a part of.

But he still was eating like normal food and you have a normal pharmaceuticals like that. He hadn't started to question.

I hadn't gone down.

So when y'all got together, y'all were pretty normal?

We were very normal.

Yeah.

Yeah. Other than we didn't want an HOA. That was our biggest Not Homesteaders of America for everybody. We didn't want a homeowners association.

Right. That was our biggest thing.

We had this vision, or I had this vision of, you grow up, you go to college, you get a degree, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, you get a house in town with a little white picket fence and a dog, and then you retire and then you hang out with your grandkids and then you die. And I hated that from the time I was like 6. I mean, I just hated that.

Did y'all talk about that on your dates?

We did.

Yeah, we did.

We did.

You both hated it.

Like there's more to life than this.

Well, you were already bucking it a little bit.

I was like, I mean, I remember literally thinking everybody in society lives in these little neighborhoods like sardines in a can.

So you both wanted out of that.

Yeah, you don't live in Wyoming to live like a sardine.

Right.

No.

But we didn't know. I remember saying, thinking, well, I don't want that, but I don't know what the alternative is.

We didn't necessarily know the answer.

So you guys met at the college. Right, that you, you went 1,200 miles.

Yes.

Y'all were both doing it. You were living the dream, so to speak, or the nightmare. Yeah, we were doing what we were going to college.

Yeah, well, he was actually working as an electrician.

I was working at the college. We were putting a new sound system in the arena.

Okay.

And I was attending.

She was going to college.

So how old are you?

I'm 40.

He's 5 years old. You're almost 41. No, you're 40, almost 42.

It's hard to keep up when you're this old. I'll lift her back up. It goes back too fast now, doesn't it?

It does.

So y'all were breaking out of the mold pretty early, just wanting to get out of suburbia. So you were already breaking some rules in your hearts. So you get into this thing and you're now you're going with your gut. And don't you think, true or false, it gets easier to question things the more you question things?

Oh yeah, for sure.

Which is why you're not like— you're not supposed to. Like, I think all the systems are like, no, no, don't start. I don't care which system we're talking about. Don't start doing that because it goes down.

It does. It does take you.

Yeah, it does. Society today, 2022. Are you a real follower?

No, I'm not. No, not, but sometimes people get it confused cuz I like if someone says be here at 6 o'clock, I'm still there at 6 o'clock. Or if they give me a list of things to bring, I'd read the list because I, I have learned in my life things go smoother when I pay attention to details.

Yeah.

But I think that has a, but that's a different, that is more how are you showing up in the world.

That's like, are you a kind person?

That's what I, I try. But sometimes people like, you are a rule follower. I'm like, no, no, no. That's actually, I don't feel like that's the same category. Yeah. It's just me paying attention to what works well for my life when I show up on time. That works out.

Yeah, usually it's better for me.

I like that better.

You talked about going to authority figures to make decisions. That was the way you were supposed to do it. You weren't supposed to question things. If it's this gray area, it feels like in your heart you feel like maybe you were supposed to consult with an older person. I had a minister tell— a minister tell me one time that a minister had no business consulting a businessman.

Really?

Yeah.

Because the—

because why?

They shouldn't meddle in, in, in, in having you make business decisions. We're not talking about moral— is this right? Yeah, we're not talking about that. But he's talking about because he was a trained minister. They go to school and they're trained as ministers. They're not getting trained in how to run a business.

I can respect— I think I respect that, that it's— I don't know that— that—

so how would you go— what would they want? You would go to the minister and say, is this right that we get the soda fountain? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. I don't know if they would want that sort of authority figure.

Um, yeah, but maybe they would have so much control in your life.

Yeah.

That you wouldn't even think to buy the soda fountain because you're doing all the other things that they have told you to do.

And we have had some pushback with that sort of thing with certain people, like, tell us you have too many projects, you guys need to stop. So you— they, you know, they're assuming all sorts of things. Make sure you have time with God because you have a lot of projects. And I'm like, you have no idea how much time I have with God. Like, I'm spending time with God as I'm painting this wall and as we're gardening and like that. This is me, like, yeah, um, maybe my life—

they had a vision of what time with God looked like. Yeah, probably a journal and a Bible.

Yeah. And I want you to follow that.

They wanted us to follow—

don't follow that, then you're not doing the right thing.

I read a quote the other day, I think it was from Ann Voskamp. I don't read a lot of her stuff, but this one stuck out, and it says, let your work be your worship. And I'm like, literally, that is how I feel when we're— even when I'm flipping burgers, I feel joy— I feel joyful doing that because we are in our Flipping burgers. Literally. Yeah. And like, there's times it's stressful and times I'm grumpy, whatever. But like, for the most part, what we do, we love. We love the projects, we love the demo, we love the painting and the growing and the building. Like, that is what I am put on this earth and what we're called to do. And it feels like we are in alignment with God when we're doing that. And I can say that with full certainty. So that's when people, like certain authorities, come through and you should do this and don't do that and you need to slow down. I'm like, No. Yeah, before that would have rattled me.

I know.

I'm like, no.

I like that we're sitting here in this— we're kind of sit here in this gray area for a minute. So, uh, because I think for the people listening, we're talking about going with our gut and knowing when to face fears. Well, there's going to be maybe some stigmas in our life.

Oh yeah.

And it might be coming from spiritual or our parents that maybe we need to address. That might, that might be where some of the fear is coming from. Yeah, I mean, it might not be something where you have to consult the elder at the church, but still you have this residual of don't question the norm.

Yes.

And that might be an artificial feel that you don't need to necessarily feel going into this.

I think sometimes it can be you need to get out of your head and get into your heart, because we can, we can overthink things, we can worry about things, we can stress about things. You know, we can let our mind overpower what we want or try to, you know, talk us out of what we— what our heart really wants and what our heart's really trying to tell us. Hey, this is what you need to be doing. I mean, that was one of the conversations we had with the soda fountain because we looked at the soda fountain and said, listen, this may not be the most financially savvy, powerful move that we could make with this chunk of money. There's probably a lot of other areas that we could put this money and get a return on our investment faster. But at the same time, our heart was going, this is just as much of an investment into the community as it is from a business standpoint. And this community is where we want to build. This is what we want to support, you know.

So our heart— you said our heart. When did your heart change? You weren't doing this. You made the phone call.

Yeah, I don't know. When did your heart change?

Listen to him talking.

I know.

How does that make you feel, Jill?

Probably as good as his.

I know. Probably more from a community standpoint, because it's like, I want to support the community. And I just knew it was going to take a lot of work. It's going to take a lot of money. It's going to take a lot of work. And so I don't know. It's an interesting—

And then I remember last year at this time, we had agreed to do it verbally, but we still were waiting on all the insurance. There was a lot of red tape we were sorting through.

This is 2020 or 2021?

2021.

Okay.

So we were like, committed-ish. We could have still backed out if we wanted to. And I— he was like, go, go, let's do it, let's do it. And I was like, wait, wait a second, this is actually real. Like, this is— what if this happens? Or what if— so then he talked me through that, and then we were both on board again. So we kind of pull each other up when one starts to freak out. Sometimes we both freak out, and then it's real bad.

What would happen if you wouldn't have got on the phone call for her. Would you have gotten irate, Jill?

No, no, I had tried. So to my benefit, I did call. I did call the store a few times, but I couldn't get a hold of the owner. And then I was like, meh, I got distracted, right? Because I've got a lot of other things to think about. So then he kind of picked up the torch.

So it's amazing that you didn't want to do that, but you did that for your wife. Way to go, Garden of Peace.

Maybe it would get me some brownie points.

Yeah, it gets you some brownie points.

Hey, I made this phone call.

Hey, honey.

Hey, what you doing at the restaurant? So that restaurant you were talking about, I already bought it. Because it wasn't even for sale. It wasn't listed. It was just, we'd heard it through kind of the grapevine that maybe she was going to sell it.

And it was when you called her.

Well, when I called her and asked, hey, are you— I heard through the grapevine that you might be selling this place. Is that true? There was this long silence on the phone and I was like, hmm. And then she's like, yeah, actually we are thinking about selling it.

What was the silence? Too sad?

I think she was sad. They didn't want to sell it, but her health was kind of starting to get to a point where it was hard for her to run the company.

And their local chug water in.

Yeah.

What do they think of it now?

We've made a lot of changes.

You actually put a kitchen in. All right, we've taken a quick break, but we're back now and we've got little baby Henry. Jonah's got to do the chores, so you'll probably hear— hopefully you hear a lot of cooing in the background. What was my question to you guys? Oh, how the owners— uh, oh yeah, are they okay with this change?

I— we haven't talked to them like point blank about it. I think it's been hard for, for some people in the town. Change is hard for people. Humans just don't like change, any change. So that has been— even though it's like amazing change, like from what I've seen, I follow you guys on Instagram, and we have the soda fountain, we have our, our friends in town who have said, you guys, this is amazing. Like, we've had that validation and we know we're on the right track. I love— I mean, it looks good, it feels good, it's clean, it's bright. But I know we've— some have told us point blank to our face. Some people have said other ways that they don't like it. And it's just different. I mean, it was not—

And that's okay.

It's okay.

Yeah.

Not everybody's going to like what we do or what anybody does for that matter.

When they tell you to your face, is it ugly?

Not usually ugly, but—

Yeah, I don't know if they'd say it's necessarily ugly, but they say they're disappointed. Which is hard.

To say that to your face.

For some reason, like a lady said last week, verbatim, I am disappointed. And I, the word disappointed really is hard for me because I just, I think it goes back to the rule follower. Yeah. I'm just like, you don't want to disappoint.

That's your problem. That's what it is. You don't want to disappoint.

I don't want to, I'm like, I don't want to disappoint you. Like, and she's old enough to be my mom. So I'm like, I'm like, you know, wait, I disappointed now. I disappointed an elder who's like, I should be earning that respect.

Yeah.

What was the disappointment? What was the complaint?

I think her initial reaction was we've taken everything out of the building and all the character and all the charm. But the reality is, is we haven't put anything back in the building. We had to take everything out to do the floor and to paint the walls and fix a bunch of stuff, you know. So we're just in the process of getting everything put back together and built.

You're not taking everything?

No, no, no, no, no.

But you needed a kitchen.

We had to have—

I mean, you took the George Foreman grill out.

Those are gone. They are not coming back.

And, and you put in a very nice kitchen. I mean, I've seen it on Instagram, and I saw the bathroom was really nicely done. I mean, these are all kitchen, bathroom, a new floor. It's painted beautifully. Like, I don't know. I'm very proud of you guys.

Thank you.

So are you making money?

No.

Why'd you look at him? Why'd you look at him? Who's counting the numbers?

She does not do money.

I don't do the money. I make the money, but I don't count the money.

Right now is our slowest time of the year.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So traditionally the business lost money from a book standpoint.

Okay.

The business lost money during this time of the year anyway. And so we knew that going into this.

Yeah.

But we also knew it from a standpoint of this is when we want to do the remodel and this is when we want to do our shutdowns because it's slow.

Yeah.

And we've done zero marketing. Like this really might be the most attention this podcast might be the most attention.

Wow.

The chocolate soda fountain has gotten because we haven't pushed it it at all because we wanted to.

Because you want to get it done. Of course.

When's it going to be done?

We've probably got another month or so of screwing around in here.

Is that the vision that your fans would come?

And they've already started.

They've already started.

Bless their hearts. They have showed up and it's been so sweet and they've been so kind and so complimentary. And so that's been really fun.

Are they going to sell your book? Are you going to sell your book?

We have been selling the book. Yeah. Oh, fun. I love it. That's been a fun.

So I honestly, y'all, y'all have inspired me. I want to, I want to own a restaurant.

You should totally own a restaurant.

But I'm like, but like at the same time, I don't want to own a restaurant. Like, do you know what I mean?

I get it.

Like, but you guys, like when you talked about buying the soda fountain, like when you first announced it, I was like, this is so cool. I was like, I have to talk to Jill, find out like what is going on.

Yeah. When she did that, we started looking at this place 4 miles away.

Yeah.

Yeah, this old store, I would have to do it. I don't know if y'all are really bold or brave. I feel like I'd have to get to a place in my life where I feel like this could be okay if it didn't make money.

We—

I would have to be— it would have to be nostalgic.

We were there.

We were there.

We were there.

Yeah.

So if this did tank, y'all gonna be okay?

We looked at it from a standpoint of, okay, it may not make us money, but it won't necessarily lose us money.

It's totally realistic. It's going to do that.

We still own the building, we still own the assets.

Yeah.

Own all that stuff. And so, you know, it was, but at the same time, you would have to understand our location and I-25 and Tugwater. It has a tremendous amount of potential.

Do you have a sign on the highway?

We don't even have that yet.

We will. Can that happen though?

It can.

And oh, cool.

Up till now it was so busy with previous owner, with the tourist traffic off I-25 without a sign, she couldn't keep up. 'Cause we said, why don't you have a billboard? And she's like, I can't. But it's the George Foreman Grill holding her back. Yeah.

She could always. Least. You're not gonna wear your shirts on this?

Totally gonna. It's gonna be amazing. Okay, but what I was saying is I loved how you guys were like, why, we want to do this for the community. And that was like, oh, that's good.

Yeah, you know, I'll tell you what happened. I really liked that you guys said this. And there's this little store, it's called now— it was Hooper's Creek Grocery for a while, but before that it was Catherine's. It was called Catherine's, and only the super locals know it. And nobody's from North Carolina. No, everybody moves to North Carolina.

A lot of people are moving here.

Yeah.

I mean, you're from North Carolina.

There was a time we would ride our bikes down to Catherine's. I mean, we— on the road, 3 or 4 miles as a kid. It didn't matter. It was country.

It was very different than it is now.

It was the '80s.

It was a lot less.

It was the '80s, okay? And we were driving in the snow, and we're not used to driving in the snow, and the roads aren't taken care of, which is not why I'm here.

Does anybody know how to drive in the snow down here?

And I think we get stuck in our van and we're about half a mile from Catherine's and it's cold. And we walk to Catherine's and we tell her— she would, um, we tell her we broke down. And, uh, I'm tearing up because of this. She gives us free hot chocolate. Yeah, those, those days are gone. The riding on the bikes on the roads, the free hot chocolate. So my goodness, we're gonna buy this place. Well, and we're gonna have this sign, we would like 30 or below, free hot chocolate.

That's what I'm saying.

We're gonna have to get to a place where we can lose some money. It might really work well and get some really high press, you know. Yeah, this destination and experience to go out to Catherine's. Yeah, when it's 30. Yeah, or below. That's not every day here. This— we're not talking Wyoming.

Yeah, right.

That would be be quite a few days.

It would be.

But I mean, maybe they would come in the store, and this is where I'm going, you know, maybe they would come in the store and buy something else or get their picture taken. But I think what might happen with you guys, you dared to do this and you're okay with it being nostalgia, but I think what's going to happen is there's going to be a blessing and a monetary, even a monetary value out of it that you didn't see coming. Yeah, you might get more fans coming. Sell a bunch of books. I don't know what it's going to be. Yeah, but you don't know.

Yeah, yeah, for the soda fountain.

Totally.

Yes, you have to come back. Yes.

Could it be fair that you might have thought you were having this soda fountain and going to serve the community, but then something bigger happens? It turns into a mercantile, or, uh, you know, I went— we went on vacation and Grandma asked the people at this place we're renting, like the go-karts, not the go-karts, golf carts. What's your number one seller? T-shirts. It's what they told us. But they got golf carts, they've got all this jet skis, like parasailing, like banana boats, and they're selling t-shirts. I'm saying you're probably going to have a surprise. Have you had any surprises?

We've already started to see that.

Yeah.

Our number one goal, I would say, was really for us to try to inspire other people. Revival in the community to start doing some stuff in Chugwater.

We're doing it right here in our town, you know, like Justin and I are like, oh yeah, maybe we should do this for our community.

I would love to see rural America like have a revival, and there's— it's already started, but I think COVID helped, you know, drive people out of the cities and see the value in these small towns. But I think there's something really special with these small, small American towns with the communities around them. It's just different.

All right, but so we've had two other young couple or families in Chugwater purchased the building across the street from the Chugwater.

So it's happening.

It's happening.

And turning it into a mercantile.

Wow.

Yeah.

So I love that.

And that's their goal and their desire. And yeah.

And like, there'll be days—

I'm all about it. Like, yeah.

A couple months ago we were painting and they were working and there was stuff on Main Street and there was kids running up and down and I just had like chills all day long.

I get the chills right now. Just like thinking about how like your every little community is like, is there a little motel I could buy? That's like my dream.

Yes, there is. There is.

That is a motel.

Like one of those mom-and-pop motels.

That's my dream.

Then you have a place to stay when you go down there.

Y'all, was built in 1912.

Wow.

But it probably needs a lot of work.

It does need a lot of work. It does need a lot.

That's seriously my dream. Like, just because I've always said, like, I just want to buy one of those little motels, like, you know, from like the '50s, and like it's just like the strip and the— there's like a little like, um, office. Yeah, I mean, that's—

it was one of the first buildings in Chugwater. It's one of the oldest buildings in Chugwater now.

I know, like, I think like, yeah, I want to do this, and then I'm like, oh my gosh, well, even just like employing people.

Yes.

Do you know what I mean? Like that sort of thing. And It's just overwhelming. I guess that anxiety means go, Justin.

Do it.

Do it.

Well, speaking of employing people, get out of your head and into your heart. Is that tough? Keeping people? Did you already have people to work with?

We already had. So we took over all the employees that were there originally, and we have a couple of them left.

Okay. Yeah, you expected that.

Yeah.

Do you think it's fair to say your gut doesn't always communicate to your brain? Your gut might be having you do this for a whole nother reason than you even understood.

Totally.

Has that happened at all?

If it's not my gut, you thought you were.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So you thought you were getting into this to invest in this town to hopefully make a little bit of money.

Money?

Could have been another reason? Gut or God?

I think it's also our way or our opportunity to invest in people.

Okay.

So, I mean, there's a lot of people who don't like having employees, and there's a lot of people that don't like dealing with employees or training employees or whatever. And honestly, it's one of my favorite things. I mean, it probably comes from being an electrician. As an electrician, we had apprentices. Businesses. And so you're just— you're a full-time teacher as a journeyman, or as a master, or as anybody who has a trade that teaches somebody else. You're a full-time teacher. And as an employer, if you're a good employer, you're also a full-time teacher. So it's your— it's your— it's my belief that it's your job to be constantly investing in those people and trying to find ways to build them up and teach them, you know. It's, it's because sometimes, sometimes that might be their best opportunity in their world to rub elbows with somebody that's outside of their normal paradigm.

Out of all these questions that you guys were asking, you know, moving to the country, spiritual, homesteading, what's this— what was the scariest question? What was the scariest thing to question?

For me, it was faith was the scariest to question because that had been the thing I had held on to, and that was like my identity. And I also— there was so much, um, like societal and cultural pressure to not question it, and like there was a lot at stake for me to question. So that was the hardest for me, but probably not the hardest for you.

No, I mean, I don't, I don't know what the hardest thing for me would have been in, in that circle.

Did you come from a faith-based background?

No, we went to church occasionally as a kid, but it was not a, you know, I've always believed in God, so to speak. You know, I've never, never an atheist. I was never questioned his existence, but I just never had that relationship with the church or, you know, I always viewed church and religion as just a method of control. You know, it was just another club. It's just another organization, which I've I generally steer clear of clubs and organizations. I don't like those things that have all these different hierarchies and elements of control and whatever. I mean, we went to church when we first started getting married, or even when we were dating, we were going to a cowboy church. And after we got married, we went to church for many, many years. And there was always aspects of that church that I liked. I liked the fellowship. I liked seeing your neighbors and talking and catching up on going over stuff. I didn't like the, well, if we're just checking boxes to, you know, yeah, we're doing what grandma did. And so we've just— somebody handed me this baton and now I'm carrying the baton and I don't really know why I'm carrying the baton. You know, eventually you just start to question, why am I doing this? What purpose does it serve in my life? And, you know, I think we both got to a point professionally and personally where we're just like, how can I uplevel myself? And in order for me to uplevel myself, I have to question everything that I'm doing. What are my patterns? What are these things that I'm doing beneficial for me? Not necessarily from a judgmental or a guilt and shame standpoint, but just does this serve me? And I just got to the point where it wasn't as big a deal for me as it was for her.

Are you still faith-filled people?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. So did you felt like you were making these questions to do it up? What did you call it? A up—

upleveling.

Upleveling. So all these questions in your mind were in a pursuit of upleveling. Did you ever doubt any of these decisions and worry, am I downleveling?

Yeah, I don't know that I ever had that fear. I always felt like I've always been pretty in tune, I guess, with where I was personally on the scale.

I've sensed that maybe— I can sense why maybe you did, she did, you didn't. Why did you feel like maybe I'm down— down leveling, not becoming better but worse?

Because I've been told my whole life that if you question or if you don't go to church or if you don't do the right things, then you are backslidden, you are lukewarm, you you are, you know, you never were saved in the first place. Like, I was told all this, so I was literally doing all those things. I had told people that. I had been that friend who was like, you didn't go to church on Sunday? Well, we need to have a talk. Yeah, like, I was that person. So it was like a full comeuppance of like, here's a taste of your own medicine, Jill. Um, so that was— yeah, I was like having these flashbacks of what if I— what if I think I'm doing the right thing, but what if I'm actually just one of those backsliders? Yeah, you got—

you brought some light with this idea of upleveling, because it— to me, it's not— your story isn't, I'm having these doubts, I'm falling away. No, it sounds to me like you're just trying to get better and better.

Yeah, it's a shedding, it's a shedding, and it's very purposeful.

Yeah, there's not a lot of exterior things maybe affecting this. We haven't talked about it at all. Has there been anything exterior affect this? Like a trial, uh, something somebody said, you know what I mean?

Something—

for a lot of people, they go through a really hard time, they lose a child or something, and of course they hate God.

There really— there wasn't that.

But I'm not saying you hate God. I'm saying I shouldn't—

no, but that's a great question because that does, that does trigger a lot. Or they have a— they go through a really horrible church split.

Yeah, we didn't have that.

And people are like, are you leaving the church because you're mad at someone? And I'm like, no, We like y'all. We still want to hang out with you. We still, we still have no issue with any of you. Like, it's totally fine. There's no hard feelings, which was hard. Sometimes people created their own hard feelings because it hurt their feelings that we left. But still, we were like, there's no— there was no big ugly anything. It just— this little tap on the shoulder, like, hey, there's something else.

There's something. But I think that in and of itself can be hard. And doing those hard things is really what causes you to dig deeper and question. You know, that's, that's, that's how you come out with the revelations on the other side. If this process is too easy, then I don't think you're going to learn anything from it.

What are you questioning right now? Doesn't have to be faith, it could be anything. What, what system are you questioning right now? I'm assuming you're always questioning.

Yeah, I mean, I always, I question every system and whether or not it's really You know, is it beneficial to me or is it just, you know, who benefits from it?

I guess I think our focus right now is just we're questioning less the maybe the exterior systems at this stage and more, um, like checking our own systems. Like, is this still right for us? Is this still right for us? Could we make this system better? Do we— can we shed any like things that are clunky about the way we're doing this or that? Even just like talking talking to you about grazing this morning. Like, that's, that's a little teeny piece, but like, well, okay, we've, we've been doing this one way for a while. Maybe it's time to actually put some effort into figuring out a better way. So just stuff like that is kind of where we're at, I think.

Yeah, that's, that's interesting. Yeah. What do you think you're going to question next? What are you going to be questioning in 10 years?

That's a good question.

Or what would you be questioning? What would you be questioning if you were more brave.

Is the metaverse where we should be or not? That's what we're questioning here.

Oh my, yeah. Yeah, we had a little talk about that, you know, the metaverse. We maybe can bring that up, you know. Joel Salatin's very proud that he's only got a flip phone, you know. He'll flash it up, you know, when we're talking about all this, getting the apps and getting on YouTube and getting the views and analytics, all that stuff. He's very proud to have stayed back with the flip phone. I feel like I'm going to be very proud to not be in the metaverse.

Same.

Same.

Yep.

And now we get it. We're in our 40s and we're like, Okay, we get Joel.

We understand Joel.

We get it. Because to him, the iPhone may be just scary and weird.

Yeah. Yeah, I know. I've always, as, you know, younger, you always look at the older folks who didn't like the telephone or didn't like the computer, didn't like, you know, and you're like, oh, come on. But now, like, I, like, nope, I am becoming that person. That is me now.

My granny would never drive.

Yeah.

I mean, she can remember horse and carriage. She never would drive. My dad would never get on the email.

Yeah.

Now, to me, I'm never going to get on metaverse. My kids are going to be like, Dad, that's how I make my living. I'm like, I'm proud for you. I don't get it. But, you know, that's how my dad was. He had no idea. But he was—

yeah, your dad had no idea.

And I think that's okay as long as we understand why.

Yeah.

Why am I choosing to not do something? Why am I choosing to opt out of this versus You know, I think of my grandparents or whatever and, well, I'm not doing this because, you know, I'm just uncomfortable with it or I'm scared of it or whatever. I don't want to do things for that reason.

Yeah.

You know, I want to, I want to know why am I opting out of something, which is, I mean, I think really where we're at in our life right now anyway. We're, we're constantly evaluating, does this serve me?

Yeah.

I mean, I didn't fly out here because I know flying doesn't serve me, right? So, wow.

Last night, Justin's like, that bottle fell out of the cabinet, it's not serving me.

Yeah, I'm bruised. I might have very well fractured my foot. I got enough problems in my feet.

It's like, what do you think about being brutal?

So we're at 10 o'clock at night being brutal, cleaning out the cabinets.

The reason we were up— we would have been asleep, but this one didn't take a nap in the car driving home yesterday from the event, or he did, he took a very short nap. He got woken up by another child, and so then he took like a 3-hour nap while we were eating dinner and talking afterwards, and I just thought he was like out for the night. Well, then you know how bedtime can get a little bit crazy, and there was some yelling and his eyes popped open, and I was like, oh no.

So you're cleaning cabinets?

We spent an hour cleaning cabinets while he crawled around on the floor and you know, enjoyed being awake for the hour and then we're like, you know what, we're just going to go to bed. Turn out all the lights. Oh, hey, sorry guys.

I guess he eventually went to sleep, didn't he? Just sitting there smiling.

He did. He did go to sleep.

So, okay, let's get back in the time machine. I tried to get you to go forward there 10 years. Let's go back. So how were you best serving people 10 years ago?

So 10 years ago.

How were you best serving the world?

So we had just started the blog. The blog was a baby. 20 years ago.

What was the name of the blog for anybody?

Prairie Homestead.

It's always been the Prairie Homestead.

It's still— yeah, still the Prairie Homestead, although we're shifting some stuff.

Still going strong?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's morphed into, you know, I kind of think of it as the hub of the wheel, and now there's all these spokes off of it, but it's still there.

Well, you've had to shift tremendously with blogging.

Blogging is not the same. Blogging isn't dead per se, but it's definitely different. You know, the internet's a wholly different animal than it was.

It really is.

Tell me if I'm wrong, because I don't, I don't necessarily know, but blogging was this is what I'm doing today. Oh, look at this, blah blah. Now it's more somebody's searching for how to say, how to can tomatoes.

Yeah, it's way less journal. Although I mentioned this on my talk at the workshop the other day, Substack is interesting to me.

Have you used Substack?

Do you know what Substack is?

Substack is what Slow Down Farmstead uses.

Yeah, it's this, it's old school long form blogging. Like very few pictures, email address goes to your email.

It's not on a website.

It is on a website if you want it to be, but most people subscribe. But it's these— it's drawing in people. It's attractive to me.

And people are paying to get in.

Some can be free, some can be paid. Okay, but it's old school, like long posts, eloquent, philosophical. None of this SEO, like, you know, headline. It's just like how we used to blog. And I'm like, oh, it's circling back. Substack. Yeah, people are wanting long form. We've gotten so short now, we're down to sentences and pictures. Yeah, we now want some long form, which I think is good. We need that. Our brains need something to chew on.

And I really— I mean, there's another— I follow two people now on Substack.

Yeah.

And I'm like, if other people that I follow, you know, because Instagram— they were on Instagram and they're just not feeling the Instagram machine any longer. There's censorship, there's, you know, ugliness. Anybody can follow you, but like with Substack, I mean, sure, anyone can follow you on Substack, but, um, there's a wall there.

There is.

And actually, I think the one that I started following today, she said that the free and paid— the paid, um, has a commenting feature, I believe.

Oh, okay.

Um, so like, that's a paywall.

I like that.

So like, the, the haters, they can subscribe and have all the feelings they want. Feelings, but they can't, um, can't express those feelings unless you throw their, their emotional vomit onto you.

So yeah, I think it's good. I think it— I think, you know, we've done so much to put up all the— to take away all the barriers for our online, right? It's all about smooth, smooth, smooth when we're doing online marketing. And I almost think sometimes breaking the rules and saying, you know, I'm gonna make this actually harder so I make sure the people that come to me are really, really committed to my message.

Yeah, um, Rory F was telling me about— and Curtis Stone has already done this, you know, he's take— uh, Rory's taking everything off of YouTube. Yeah, except for a little bit of stuff. And, and for him, it's to just serve his community. Yeah, he has a heart to just serve his people, which is He doesn't— sometimes tempting for me. Yeah, because we have our own platform now. We could totally do that. So there's this balance of trying to serve the public and, you know, finding these people in the first place. Yes, that's how we got our sweet community we have. And, you know, when do you, yeah, branch off into that?

Yeah.

So you were blogging 10 years ago. Yeah. Uh, did you ever Were you still being electrician, Christian?

Yep.

Was, was— I know this, I think you brought him home, didn't you? Eventually with blogging or your entrepreneurial ventures?

Yeah, 2015. So I blogged for 5 years on the side and then went full time.

You were able to bring him home as a professional blogger. Was this monetization money from ads on your site? How, how, where was this income coming from?

We had ebooks, we had some ads, we had affiliates, but the biggest was doTERRA at that time.

Okay.

That was our biggest chunk that really I mean, we're risk takers to a point, but there's— I mean, we still do our due diligence, you know, we're not crazy here. So we've had—

and in all honesty, I didn't want to come home.

Yeah.

Oh, you didn't? No, that was not the plan.

No, that was not the plan. And in fact, we used to go to a lot of doTERRA conventions and we traveled the world with doTERRA, and we'd had a lot of doTERRA families, you know, be like, well, how come you haven't quit your job yet? Well, I like my job. I like what I do. Why would I What am I going to do? Come home, lay on the couch, you know? Like, and I told her initially, I told her, I'm like, don't ever tell me that you're going to bring me home.

Yeah.

Like, don't ever tell me that.

You guys had this conversation?

Oh yeah.

How'd that go, Jill?

I was like, well, okay. Like, so I was like, I'll hire more babysitters, I guess. You're not for hire.

Was that weird then when you decided to— when you guys made the decision for you to quit your electrician?

Well, it was, it was weird for me. I mean, we, I retired, so to speak, from being an electrician to come home and build the addition on our house. That was really my purpose.

Once he had the purpose, he was okay.

I have a job. I'm going to go from building the pipeline to building this addition on our house.

She might ask this. I didn't hear because the baby. But how'd she convince you to come home?

I mean, really, that was the house.

I didn't convince him. We got to the point where we're like, hey, we need an addition.

Okay, our house is too small.

And I remember when you did that on the blog, that gave you a sense of something to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for a while after that, I struggled with my identity of going, did you? What am I? You know, like, I mean, for years I kept telling people I'm an electrician.

Yeah, he would.

But like, that's defines us. Everybody wants to—

but you weren't an electrician anymore. I mean, I still maintain my license today, but I'm still, you know, it's just like, it's almost like this my security blanket of going, well, if all this other entrepreneurship stuff fails, cool, I'll still be an electrician.

And I've heard it from you over the weekend just a number of times. You mention it, like when you went to pick up your RV, you let that guy know, I'm an electrician, and you told me that.

And the skills come in handy, I will say that.

Yes, it does. I was like, what do we need done?

That's why I didn't my license, obviously, and the remodeled houses and flipped houses and doing the restaurant and that kind of stuff. So obviously it still is a skill that I use. But yeah, for the first 2 or 3 years after I quit being an electrician full-time, I struggled with—

was he fun to be around during that time?

There was some— yeah, there was some struggles. Like, it was— and then I, you know, I'm kind of like, once the house was done, I'm like, cool, go figure out something to do. Like, I have my purpose Yeah, cool. And we knew he was not going to be a blogger. I didn't expect— he's not going to write, he's not going to talk.

I didn't— he's not going to assist you on that either.

He's not going to, which was fine. I didn't expect him to. But then there was that tension of like, well, go do something, find your— build your own online business. And he's like, I don't want an online business. So then it was like, well, then what are you going to do? So there was that.

What'd you do?

Started buying cows.

Are you happy?

Oh yeah, yeah. But it's taken several years really for me to come through and figure out what am I doing and how, you know, what is my purpose. Because, you know, I think it's really just an element of learning to think bigger.

Yeah.

If I look back over the last 10 years, the biggest lesson I've learned is how to, how to think bigger. You know, if I go back 10 years and my ability to think outside of this so-called box was not very big, you know, at one time I would have said, yeah, I'll be an electrician for 30 years and then, wow, this is what I'm going to do and I'm never going to go outside of that and blah, blah, blah. So I've learned how to expand way beyond that now, obviously. But it's been a fun adventure.

So if somebody meets you on the street now or you get talking with somebody, they say, what do you do now? Hey, Chris, what do you do? What do you tell them?

I still have a menagerie of answers.

That is the hardest. It's a hard one. It's the hard one. Like the other day someone asked me and I was like, I literally just stared at him and I'm like, he probably— and I'm like, I— what did I say? I have an online business. And I'm like, oh, that's like the worst part. It sounds like I'm like one of those entrepreneurs.

You should say I'm a serial entrepreneur.

I should have said that because then he's like, oh, okay. I'm sure he's picturing, you know, stay-at-home mom licking envelopes at her kitchen table. I'm like, if you— if I just— yeah, never mind.

Just think what you want because it's so diverse because you're doing so many things.

Yeah.

What do you tell them? Do you tell them you're a podcaster?

Do you tell them you write blogs?

Do you— which one are you gonna pick? You make some YouTube videos?

I've said blogger a lot, but then I don't know. You have a company?

You own a soda fountain?

You're doing doTERRA? What do you tell them?

I think I like— I think entrepreneur is what I've settled on. Yeah. And then they go, oh, okay.

How do they take that?

They're like, okay.

Because they don't really want to know.

No, people don't want to know. At the end of the day, they don't want to know.

Because if you told them all that, they're like rolling— they're like so bored.

They're like, why are they telling me everything that they do?

They're just being polite. They are trying to trying to put you in a box, I think. We are trying to figure people out and put them in a box. It's fair enough, isn't it? Because if you're going to spend 8 hours of your waking day, you're sleeping 8, so that's gone. So there's only another 8.

Well, I mean, you could just start saying—

pretty much who you are.

Yeah, it is. But yeah, but that's how we define people in our culture.

It is.

What is your— what do you do? Who are you?

I used to just not answer that, and I said, okay, I'll just, I'll just make something up. I'll just do— it got me in trouble once because I was filming my friend's wedding.

It was my best friend's wedding.

Somebody came up to me and they said, what do you do for a living? I'm holding this camera, and I was very amateur at that time. And I said, oh, I'm a videographer. And they took it and they're fine. And yeah, you know, thankfully they didn't dig in.

So then we're walking because that's the only— I was walking with that person. She says, oh, your husband's a videographer.

I was like, what? He is?

I wonder He started, I was like, did he tell you that?

And then I was like, why did you say that to them? And he's like, it's just too much to like tell them everything that we do. I'm a mountain boarder, I do a video magazine, I have— I'm a punch press operator.

Yeah, I take the trash for my rent, I mow the grass for my rent.

Like, you know what I mean?

So much.

Like, people are just trying to put you in a box.

And if you say, well, I'm a dad or a husband.

He used to try to do that.

Well, then you're a smart butt.

Yeah, no, he did try that, and then the person would say, no, like, what do you do for—

Yeah, somebody dug deeper.

They did. They said that. What do you do for money? And Justin's like, so is that what I'm defined as? What I do for money?

Yes.

That makes no sense. Like, that's not who I am.

Like, you—

I thought you were asking, like, who am I?

Yeah.

That— did you say what you tell people?

A menagerie.

He'll say, like, yeah, I mean, usually it's rancher, entrepreneur, business owner or something like that.

Something like that. They're happy with that.

Self-employed, always like, oh, we work for ourselves.

Yeah, I've done that.

And they don't dig deeper.

They don't.

And if they do, they probably really want to know.

Which is amazing because I dig deeper.

You do?

I mean, that's fascinating.

When you ask somebody what they do?

When I see somebody that's successful, I want to know everything. Oh, okay.

Yeah.

How do you do this? How did you get here? What did you do? What did you struggle with? What have you learned? You know, I ask all these questions, and yet 99.9% of the time nobody, nobody wants to know those things.

Yeah, but you'll ask that of people. Oh yeah, will they answer you?

Usually, yeah. Like, people like—

the last one you couldn't think of?

You're the smartest.

What's the biggest struggle going on right now?

Oh yeah, those are really good questions. I mean, I have it written down to ask you those questions, so let's ask you those questions. Uh, uh, what were they? They were, uh, oh yeah, what's— what is— you asked me what's next first. Was there a reason for that order? Because I would have thought, ask the struggle and then say what's next. Yeah, you asked the struggle.

He just doesn't know.

Okay, well then let's go in your order.

Yeah.

What is y'all's biggest struggle right now?

I hate the word balance, but it's just figuring out how to keep the pieces, the balls in the air.

There is no balance.

There is no— I don't really believe in balance. I don't believe in like there's not perfect compartments in my life. There never will be. But just like, okay, well, how do I— as our kids get bigger and they have more activities, like, how does my role in the business look? And what does that look like for homesteading? And what does that look like for other— our other businesses? And just that constant shifting, changing. That's kind of where I'm always— I'm just like problem solving that a lot right now.

I'm, I'm gonna ask you this because you get it a lot. You don't know how to answer it, so I'm going to ask you this perfect question. How do you balance it all? I guess you do know how to answer it. You have a good answer.

I don't. I don't balance it.

I don't. And the other thing I say always is we have something that people want to, like, shame you on.

Yeah.

If you take on too much, really, or if you push too—

that's coming from shaming.

Oh yeah, that's what we have been given. Yeah, that's— it's, it's always been from a shame state.

Always a shame.

Always.

It's not a heroic— they're not looking up to you.

No, you're 'Your kids are going to suffer.' They're not trying to learn from you.

They're trying to shame you.

Yeah, there's some people who look up to us, but most of the time it's— I shouldn't even say most of the time. There's been a select few that say, you know, 'You're suffering. Your relationship with God's going to suffer. Your relationship with your kids are going to suffer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because you're trying to do too much.' Yeah, but they don't even know.

The people who don't know us that well. Yeah, and it's usually from people It's less online. That, that's more like people in— that's like local people. Yeah.

Do you, do you believe in this saying, you are the 5 people you hang out with?

Yeah.

You do believe it?

Absolutely.

Do you, do you hang— no.

Well, I should say, I hope not.

I hope it's not true.

It's—

you think it's true?

I think it's true. I think— but, but okay, he says it's true, but with a caveat.

He said somebody who's Go ahead.

His definition was, if you show me the 5 people you hang out with the most, then I'll show you where you're going.

Okay.

So because you've—

but I would say I don't hang out with—

necessarily have to be people you hang out with physically.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think it could be who's in your circle. There's people in our circle that obviously that I look up to who I physically don't spend any time with.

Yeah, there are people in your circle, based on your story, you know, you're Wyoming, on a financial and entrepreneurial level, you have far exceeded that. There's no way they're going to even understand. But you're saying you can surround yourself with books.

That's what I was going to say, books and podcasts. Because like, there's people we hang out with that I enjoy, but they're on a different track. They don't want to be on our track. They think our track is just not for them. So yeah, I, I don't, I don't, I'm just not influenced by them and their choices, but I have podcasts and books in my head constantly.

This is good.

So that's who I feel like, that is who I, I'm like looking out here, looking out here, to the point sometimes, and that gives people hope.

Yeah, because they're probably surrounded by losers.

Well, the thing is that I would say no, no, I'm not.

I'm speak— I'm totally— I am very fortunate. Fortunate to have created a community around myself that is absolutely amazing. I am not surrounded by losers, and we have wonderful Jason back here.

I am not.

I am very blessed. But I want to speak to the person who's saying, oh, Justin, that's nice to you to say because you've built this thing and you get all these people. But I was once— didn't have Jason around and the Hollers around and, and Art and Bree and, and you guys. People who are movers and shakers, Jess and Jeremiah. But you don't say, you can't sit there in defeat saying, oh, I don't, I'm not 2 hours from Jessica, she's not going to email me back or whatever. You can't sit in defeat. You have to go and surround yourself with Smart Passive Income podcast.

Yes.

Tim Ferriss's podcast, Think and Grow Rich audiobook, and Zig Ziglar.

Yeah, that's just it.

And then you can break out.

If you're surrounded by losers now or you're hanging out with losers now, then just stop hanging out with them and start hanging out with somebody different. I mean, if you choose to go hang out at happy hour every single night until 2 o'clock in the morning, that's a good point. Well, then that's your group, you know. That sets the benchmark for where you're at in your life and where you're going to go. But if you decide, hey, I'm going to stop hanging out at happy hour every day of the week and I'm going to go hang out and listen to podcasts and read books and go to conventions or go to seminars or do personal development type stuff, go to the gym, whatever. Yeah, well, that all of a sudden elevates your benchmark.

And you brought up a good point about your local surround— the people you surround yourself with. They might not be on this financial track. They're, they're not going to have this diverse portfolio financially like you will. So may— but there are other features of success, aren't there? Maybe, maybe you really appreciate their parenting, right, or their spiritual angle or whatever.

And that's what we found. We have good people. Like, we have people that we enjoy going to brandings with or doing cattle work with, and then we have people I enjoy riding horses with, and they don't get at any other area of my life, but I can enjoy them for our horse relationship. And then we have— yeah, our group, we get together with quite a bit. They're really good with physical fitness, so like they're dragging me along for a half marathon in September. I would not do that if not for their influence. Kids, right? They don't get the rest of our life. They don't really homeschool. They don't— they're not really into food. They're not really into business. And I— so I get inspired with that other places, and then we enjoy them for who they are and who they are. Yeah. And what they bring to the table. Yeah.

And hopefully it reciprocates. Hopefully we bring something.

I think we rub off on them sometimes. Yeah.

That helps build. That's true.

Yeah.

In some way. All right. I mean, you know, you should ask yourself the question all the time of who am I serving and how am I serving. I mean, that's one of the reasons I like employees, because it's my job to— it's not, it's not the job of the employee to serve me. It's my job to serve the employee and to teach that employee and to bring that employee up and to give that employee something to look forward to in the future and whatever. Okay, so that's good. You know, it's the same thing with your friends.

Yeah.

How am I serving my friends and how am I feeding my friends? And doing things like that.

Yeah, we'll wrap up.

You fed your friends good this trip.

I hope so, man, because lunch was all off the farm. Eggs, bacon, sausage. If you didn't like that, it doesn't get any better than that.

Well, tonight we're having mac and cheese with y'all's steak.

With steak and mac and cheese.

Like, super excited about that. And some grocery store zucchini.

That's totally fine.

We're gonna totally get into your other question, which is, well, it was, uh, what's next? So, but let's save that for the end because I want to get back in the time machine. 5 years ago, who, who were you serving and how? And I'm looking at both of you. I know I'm looking right at Christian.

I'm craning my neck a little too much if I look at Jill. Uh, 5 years, years ago was like doTERRA land. We're really invested in doTERRA, which was a great period of our life. We met some awesome people. We did some good traveling. Got us out of our comfort zone on travel.

Where was travel? Good traveling. What's good travel?

I still struggle with travel, but—

We went to Switzerland. We went to Africa. We went to Bulgaria, Romania.

With doTERRA products.

Wait a minute. You told me this morning the best coffee you ever had was in Haiti.

It wasn't a doTERRA trip, but you went to Haiti. But I went to Haiti. We did a humanitarian trip there.

Okay.

Worked on building a kindergarten school.

So you were crushing it with doTERRA. Where was the blog? Was it still—

It was kind of back-burnery. Like, it was still going. I never quit blogging, but it, you know, when we talk about balance, like, to me, they don't all— nothing ever really all happens at the exact same time, even though sometimes people look at our life and think it does. You know, there's always something that's getting kind of the weight or the bulk of our focus and other things are kind of just simmering. And then so that period, the blog was simmering and doTERRA was on full boil.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

You know, this makes me think for whatever reason it wasn't about— it was about this time 6 years ago, it would have been about the time I approached you.

Yeah.

And I want to encourage the listeners and the viewers that I have Jill Winger in my, my house right now. Okay, you know, we got to that, to where we're surrounding ourselves with people we want to be like, right? But that didn't just happen by randomly, uh, send you an email, will you be my friend? Yeah, what would you do to that? I mean, she's too nice to say, oh, she said it, and not because you're a jerk, but it's kind of like, that's weird, you don't— I'm a complete change.

Yeah.

So people just have to get out of this woe is me, poor is me, this is not my situation, look at them, that's because they have this or that. No, you just have to get out there and start doing it. Yeah, start creating, right?

Yes. Just, yeah, just get out there. You will make mistakes. Yeah, you will. People will tell you no. Like, they will.

You told me no.

I told you no. Yeah, I remember that.

Do you remember more clearly? I'm trying to get it down because I'm like, well, you promote— I don't know, did I call ask you to share my Kickstarter?

Yeah. And I remember it was a good— like, it wasn't just like an instant, like, no, no. It was like, I was like, oh man, you were pregnant.

I was with Sage.

Was I pregnant? See, when I'm pregnant, oh, it's—

I'm— and that's when— so you're what?

I don't function when I'm pregnant.

Okay, she's pregnant.

And it was like, are you more apt to accept a request like that when you're pregnant, or less?

Less.

I forget why you said you, you replied.

And you said yes. And you said yes to the blog post because you were pregnant.

Yeah.

No, no, wait, you're going too fast. So I reply, I, I texted you about Kickstarter.

Yes.

And you, it was a nice email. It was a nice email. Declined. Yes.

Yes.

I remember getting these emails from like getting it back from Joel or, or Jill. And you know how it's still dark before you click on the email? You know what I'm I would like try to keep it fresh and call back up. Hey, they've replied. And then you said something like, oh, well, I'm really busy. Yeah. And then you said, oh, my husband's an electrician.

You're busy.

He doesn't help me.

So forget it. So then you came.

What did you—

you don't take no for an answer. I countered.

Yes.

You might have said you're busy.

I'm sure I did.

Yeah. Countered with Well, could I do a guest post for you?

Yes.

And you were like, heck yes. And I didn't just say, can I do a guest post? If I remember right, I said, could I do one on this topic? And it would be really easy for you to say yes or no. There was going to be no brainstorming.

I did not have to think.

No.

Anyone watching who wants to get someone's attention.

Yeah.

Like, don't make them think.

Do not make them think.

It needs to be a, here's what I'm going to give you. Here's what I expect. Yes or no?

Yes.

So everybody listening, listen to that. Because you can get our attention that way.

I'm so excited.

But no, few people do it. Few enough people do it that we're not going to be bothered. I'm confident that I can say this even on here because few people do it.

Because it takes more work. And I can smell a cut and pasted form letter a mile away. Like, yeah, so do you know, put that personal, you know, make— I— if someone is just finding me randomly on Google, I can tell immediately.

And you can tell I didn't cut that, cut and paste that email. No, that's why you were kind enough to answer.

Yes, yes.

I am not— I'm not adept to that yet because somebody had emailed me. I ordered something from a company and they actually know who we are, and then they responded back, and I was reading it to Justin. He's like, this is cut and paste.

I was like, it is?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There'll be errors in it sometimes. It'll be the other person's name, whoever they texted you before.

You can see the different fonts. That's, that's a dead giveaway. Sometimes it's not that obvious, but you can see like different fonts when they cut and paste different pieces.

Oh yeah, you can't take the time. Now I used to, if somebody would comment on my YouTube channel and they'd say, this was great, and they'd put an 8 in instead of spelling it all the way out. I'm like, I've spent all this time creating this content.

If you can't write out the word great, or they say, dear the Prairie Homestead, and I'm like, that's a dead giveaway.

Dear the Prairie Homestead.

Yeah. So nobody—

my favorite is, I love your content, this is what I want you to, to hawk for me, and it is way off base, and you're just like, You obviously don't know what our content is. Bless them.

Nobody has, to get Joel, it was, well, I want an hour of his time. I found out in a roundabout way what his fee was. I could have called Polyface and found out what his speaking fee was. I divided by that, but his speaking fee is for all day. So I divided that by 8. And put, hey, and I'll come to you. You don't even travel that much. In 6 years, I've got people, can I come pick your brain? Can I come shoot this about you? Can you come, can I shout you out in this? Nobody has ever yet said, hey, I'll give you, even if they're throwing out a number.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would appreciate that more. They could say, hey, I'll give you $200. Can we come, you know, and help you with the chores? And I get a shout out, I'm trying my new vlog out. Yeah, that I think your audience, or your audience should be interested in.

See, that people—

I would be about it.

But I think what people need to know is that we need to be asked. Like, when somebody's like, oh, I want to come to your farm, and you know they want a shout out but they're not saying it, that's weird.

It's like awkward for us because we're like, that's why I said you had to say what you expect.

If we don't, if we don't do what they're expecting, then we're the jerk their hurts and their hurt feelings. Like, it's just best to get it all out on the table. So if you want something, just ask for it and say what you want.

Yeah.

So my ask and give to you was, I'll give you a blog post and here's the name of it, because I've noticed you didn't have one on this already and might want one. Your audience— I was thinking about your audience too. What would your audience want to read? And then here's what I want. At the end of the blog post, I get to link my Kickstarter. Why wouldn't you do that? You would do that all day long. You'd be crazy not to.

And then you got my attention enough and you did a good job on the blog post. And I was like, well, this guy's legit. Like, I actually like his stuff. This is actually valuable. So then I think I put money in your Kickstarter and then I even—

You probably did.

And then I like, we did something. Oh, I was in— You had—

You helped me after the Kickstarter for sure. You signed up as an affiliate.

Yes.

So I'd already built this relationship with you.

Yeah.

Of course I'll be an affiliate. And you did really well.

Yeah. And it was great. Then I was like, yeah, you're— because you had to prove that you were just not another— Yeah.

This is a funny story. You know, we're early on and we have our email set up to where it dings. I had just arranged with you, you were going to send out— I was going to be in the toolbox or you were doing something weekly at that time. I don't know if it was going to be— I think you were going to send a dedicated.

Yeah.

And and it was about 8 AM or whatever time it was. We were doing dishes or something and we heard the ding, ding. And I said to Rebecca, I bet Jill sent out her email. And sure enough, I went over there. All these sales are coming in. It's great. So thank you. Thank you for taking that.

So fun. Absolutely. Yeah.

Thanks for taking it.

Who would've thought? Like, here we are.

I know, right?

I know. Now here we are. We went to see you on the American Farm Tour.

And then we saw you on the American Farm Tour.

And that was— I was fangirling, just some, because like I'd read your blog for a long time. I remember when you guys remodeled.

Yep. Yes, I was like following that. You knew Oakley, I think. You knew all about Oakley.

Yes, the Brown Swiss. I know, which I'm still like, maybe we should get a Brown Swiss.

Get you some Brown Swiss genetics in here.

Yeah. Where did you get your Brown Swiss? Because are they common in Wyoming?

Not necessarily. There was this one at an organic dairy in Colorado.

Colorado.

And then we use— because you're so close to college, so we just had the one and then we've been using browns with semen. So now we have a lot of them. We do.

So we AI. So yeah, because we wanted to be able to stick with—

I know we should have put one in the trailer behind the RV. That would be fun.

I've got a bred heifer we could bring out.

Justin's all like, he's not saying anything.

I'm about to take notes here.

You ready to go to AI? High school, right?

You were talking about getting a Brown Swiss. Yeah, I think we went away from it. So big.

They are big.

But okay, but the reason is, is because I love this dairy or creamery. I guess they're called creameries, they're not dairies.

I don't know.

Oh, what's it called? Um, you can chat.

Trader's Point.

Trader's Point Creamery.

And I used to buy their yogurt.

Or Indiana.

Indiana. I used to buy their yogurt and I had, you know, researched them back in the day when I bought food at the grocery store, I tried to research all the companies, you know, to see what we were really getting. And it looked really good. And so then when we were on the tour, we went to their restaurant and their farm, and I was so nervous driving there because I was like, this is what I think, because this is what they say on the internet. Yeah, but we all know that they can say whatever they want, right, until you get there, and then it's a hot mess. But it was amazing. It was so— it was just everything that I had ever hoped it would be. And I was like, I want a brown Swiss now, because they do brown Swiss.

Yes.

And I was like, so back to the time machine.

We're getting away from this.

Sorry, go back to the time machine.

Go back to time machine.

This is fun. I mean, but we are running out of time.

I know. Wow, we have— we've made it.

I know, it's just easy. I feel like I could go another hour and a half.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, so back in the time machine, let's go more to now. So you were blogging. We've already talked about transitioning from blogging, making them a little different, but I feel like on your Instagram page— well, one, you changed your handle from The Prairie Homestead to just Jill Winger.

Yeah.

Did you say why when you did that? I don't remember.

I did. I don't remember what I said. No, it was this year. Or not this year. I don't know what year it is. I keep thinking it's 2021. It was 2021.

Yeah, it was when I did it.

It was like summer.

It wasn't that long ago.

So was that your—

it felt like a coming out.

It was a coming out.

Okay.

Yeah.

Tell me how.

Um, so it'd been simmering for a while and I was too scared to, to do it. I kept thinking, I can't, I can't. So I had to talk to him many times. I talked to my coach.

I just was—

it's hard to explain because I'm not done with homesteading. We're still homesteading. We love homesteading. I'm not going to quit talking about homesteading. But there was— I felt like a lot of pieces of me that I, you know, I'm learning and things I'm reading and doing and chewing on that I felt boxed in with my, my brand because it was only homesteading. So I was like, yeah, my books and what I listen to are like this broad expanse and the topics that I love to talk about are all over here. But then the way— only way I was allowing myself to show up online was like this little tiny here's how to make tomato paste and bread. And I was just kind of bored with it.

Okay.

So I started to go, what, you know, what's lighting me up? And also, like, I started to think about what really brought us to this point where we have this amount of freedom and, you know, we're able to kind of just go and do and we don't answer to bosses and we don't answer to any of these, you know, societal structures. And how did we get to this point? Because homesteading was a piece of that, but it wasn't all of it. And so I thought, well, I think I would be more excited to share content if I was able to let these other pieces of myself out and, and talk about some of those to the world. And so, you know, I went back and forth. I'm like, I'm going to lose all my followers because they come to me for how to bake bread and canned tomatoes. And, you know, I was ultimately like, I either kind of stay in strictly the homestead space and I'm kind of not authentic to who I really am. It's not like I was hiding any part of me. I just wasn't putting it all out there, or I just do what's lighting me up and risk losing a bunch of followers. So I ultimately decided, you know, you got to stay true to who you are and be authentic. And so after a lot of— there were a lot of conversations. He was all for the authenticity.

I always try to bring a different perspective because she would be like, well, I'm gonna lose a bunch of followers.

Did you? No, I didn't think you would.

Well, did you lose?

I don't think so. I don't— I just stopped looking.

I'm like, if you lost that follower, did you ever really have that?

Yeah, right. They weren't for me.

If they don't want all of you— like, that's— I think people are super surprised by, like, Justin and I, that we don't live, breathe, and do homesteading all the time. Like, that we have other interests.

Yes.

Like, we— I don't necessarily read a lot of them.

I do read—

yeah, I read more homesteading books than Justin, right? I mean, and he does read some.

He knows it all.

He's writing a book.

But what what I'm saying is like so many people think like that, that's all we want to talk about. Actually, we don't really want to talk about— when we get together with our friends, sure, we talk about things, but that is not the bulk of what we talk about. We are— we're all complex people, and yes, homesteading is just an aspect of our life.

Yeah.

And so like, I mean, this, you know, right? But it hasn't been like—

we're not talking gardening strategies the whole time.

Yeah, I mean, we brought up the Swiss cow and yeah, I even got us off of out as soon as I could.

I know, I know. As soon as I could.

It was actually that as I started to come out with it, I've had more people— it actually, my content started doing better.

Yeah.

And people actually have gone out of their way to tell me, thank you, and I'm, I'm really interested in the other parts of you, which I'm sure there's people who aren't. It was very sweet. So sweet.

Wow.

And I'm sure there's people who aren't, and I— that's cool. You're not meant for me and I'm not meant for you, and it's fine. And, and right blessings, go, go on your way. But it's been good, and I've found more interest. I've got my fire back, and I think the people who are attracted to my brand anyway had those— probably had the same pieces that I was, you know, as I do. They like some of the same books, they like some of the same ways of seeing life. So it's been a good thing.

I appreciate you doing that, breaking out like that. The, the thought is, I try to tell people and remind people, because you get into homesteading, you get excited, and It's this lifestyle. It does become a lifestyle.

Yes.

We don't serve homesteading. Homesteading serves us. And I'll say the same thing about permaculture.

Yeah.

Anything. You can classically see it, you know, I classically saw it in our trainer who would do Whole30 but wouldn't last on Whole30.

Yeah.

Well, Whole30 should serve you. You should use Whole30 how you can. To serve you, sustain, you know what I mean? This Whole30 diet, you know, right?

Yes.

Uh, or it's not gonna last.

Yep.

Yes.

You would have burned out.

Oh yeah, totally.

If you couldn't have talked about some other things.

Yeah, because I kind of got a lot of the topics— like, I love talking about bread, but I'm like, I can't do many more podcasts on bread, like, or videos. I'm just like, I'm running out. I'm just running out of oomph here.

Do you guys have Netflix?

Yeah.

What's the, what's the last thing you watched and enjoyed, if you want to share that? Or what's something that, that you watch on there? And I will do the same, we'll play this game.

Okay.

That people might be surprised that you would watch, that you watched.

What did we just finish on that?

I can never remember what we watched. We just finished something.

We watched The Last Dance with, with Michael Jordan. With Michael Jordan.

Oh, we watched that.

That was—

we watched that when I was sick.

The Last Dance with Jordan. Wasn't that so good?

It was so good.

You read the book The Winning or Winning by Tim Grover?

I never heard of it. You're talking about a book now?

Yeah, Tim Grover was—

oh, we're writing that one down.

He was in The Last Dance. That was what turned me on to The Last Dance.

The Winning, W-I-N-N-I-N-G.

It's W-1.

W-1.

And all the chapters are number 1 in the book. So you'll see.

Interesting.

Oh, interesting. Oh, because he's the winner.

But it's a great book from the standpoint of what we were talking about earlier with people who would tell you you're doing too much or you're pushing too hard or you're, you know, whatever. Yeah, because he argues the opposite of that. He's like, if you want to be the best, there is no balance in your life, you know. And he breaks down the stories of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and all these great basketball players. So then that's where, like, well, here's the problem.

If you hadn't watched that show about Michael Jordan and the Bulls in the '90s You would have never heard about the book The Winning.

No, actually we heard them.

Oh, you heard it? Yeah. Okay, well, if you didn't read The Winning, then you got on this Michael Jordan thing, right? And I know because I watched it, I'm sure you got something out of that.

Yeah.

So take that back to the 5 people who influence you the most. I mean, it's— there's always something that's leading you down the trail, you know? There should be somebody in your life right now that's pushing you guys to do the next thing. You know, there's people in our life right now that are pushing us to do the next thing, even though we might be scared of it or think we can't do it or think it's impossible or whatever. You know, that's, that's how I take that. And so it's—

if people don't have that, they might need to hire it. I remember early on in, in my first hiring first employees stages, there was nobody to talk to. Yeah, there's this do-it-yourself, do you should do everything mentality. You should save as much as you can. I'm talking about mowing my own grass. Should I hire that out? So think about it. And I hired a coach, and that's one thing I asked about, if I should hire that out, if I should hire somebody to come in and help me with the kids for the afternoon so I can get some stuff done. And I had to pay him a lot. Yeah, but he was in a whole nother mentality, whole nother world. And you know what he told me? He's like, just do the math, Justin.

Yeah.

How long does it take you to do the— to mow? An hour.

Yeah.

How much are you worth an hour? Let's, let's be conservative. I'm okay. I was worth $25 an hour. It could have been $50, could have been $100, could have been, uh, $20. Okay, you can hire this teenager, he'll do it for $15. Do the math, Justin. All day long. You hire, you hire out the mowing.

Yeah.

So the point is, if you don't have these people in your life, sometimes you might have to spring for it.

So that was a growing moment for you. I mean, it was a great—

and this was an older man. This was like '60s.

Yeah.

And he was like, you know, real bold about it.

Yeah.

And I needed that.

Yes. And we have hired coaches. We have a coach right now. We both have the same one. And he's one— I met— we talked to him once a week on Zoom. But he's someone I consider in our circle of 5 people. Like he is an in— he is a direct influence.

We had to hire him.

Do you guys go together?

Do you guys do individual?

Yeah.

Same guy.

Same guy. Yeah.

Huh.

And that's, I mean, I just, even now I feel like a lot of the stuff I used that I used to run by him, I don't need to run by him now. Cause I kind of, you know, in my groove on some things, but just having that higher mindset to bounce stuff off of is valuable. I'd pay for that. All day long.

Yeah.

Back to books and you're coming out. You posted on Instagram a list of books. You just did it recently too, so you've done it a number of times. Yeah, I'm talking about the list of books with the, the motorcycle mechanic.

Yes.

And, uh, what was his name? David Goggins. What was the name of his book?

Oh, Can't Hurt Me.

Can't hurt me. I totally got that book.

Yes.

Now I could see why it You were shy in posting all these books because you're going away from this, like, how would I describe it? This prairie homestead. It was homesteading. And then all of a sudden you're recommending this book on this ultra athlete who's got a filthy mouth.

Very filthy.

And is very driven and was military. It's totally not homesteading.

He's almost not human.

He's not. I know. And I like— I've always liked those guys. Like, I like the guys, the motivational guys who wear black t-shirts and yell. Like, those fire— those guys fire me up. So then I— as I'm listening to those guys for years, you know, I'm like, everyone has this image of Jill in the apron holding a chicken, and they would die if they knew what I actually listened to.

So this is what it was.

This was this—

you were feeling this.

Yeah.

And this is why you finally felt in your heart, you just got to be—

I'm like, I'm done. I cannot be— I can wear an apron, but I can also listen to the guy yelling the F-word on the podcast.

And I just got a lot out of it. And you just came to the point, I gotta let people go. I gotta let it out. And if they unfollow me, then I'm sorry. And it might hurt your feelings, right? Yeah, sure.

I don't like being unfollowed, but it's fine.

It would sadden you if some nice homeschool kid is following you and picks up the David Goggins book.

Yeah.

And is— gets in trouble with his parents.

Sure.

And, or he's disgusting.

And, and then is disappointed in you, Jill.

Yes, that would not feel good, but it's worth that. It's worth the risk. It's worth the risk.

But it's who you are.

Like, it's— I think—

I feel like we have to stop apologizing for who we are. Do you know what I mean? Like, we have to still be who we are. Like, yes, we have like this online presence, but then we are also people, you know?

And we really need to Yeah, I ended up recommending that book to my email list.

Yeah.

I mean, I feel like people can buy it if they want. They need to be their own parent.

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that too. I agree.

Yeah.

I feel like people can make the decisions for themselves.

If they don't want—

it's good, it's bad.

David Goggins up on Instagram and they're like, yeah, not for me.

Yeah.

I mean, I follow Gary Vee.

Yeah.

One of the most unbelievable positive people. You wouldn't know it at first because every other, every third word is a swear word. It's a little heavy one too.

Yeah.

And, uh, but his message is incredible.

There's probably something else.

Yeah, there's a stigma.

So yeah, what's a bad word anyway? Who said, right, this word, the S-H-I-T word, that's going to be bad?

Yeah. Let me go back.

It's not gonna be.

Yeah. The whole system. What? Who in the system said, yeah, let's break some rules?

Who has that power? Yeah, who had that? They had some marketing.

They did. Yeah.

Who died made their guru there. Yeah.

So I can see watching The Last Dance and getting something out of it, right? You're watching this success story. Or David Goggins. But just for the sake of confession, Rebecca and I watched Cobra Kai. On Netflix.

I've not watched it yet.

This Karate Kid saga continued.

It's so stupid.

And it does. They had more of a potty mouth in like season 1, but it stopped.

Yeah, they cleaned up.

It did clean up. I feel like it's not as—

I think that's because Netflix got it from YouTube. It's not as offensive. Netflix would clean it up.

Okay.

I don't know. It's just not as— it's not as like out of control.

I don't think we're learning anything from it, guys.

Okay.

I think we're just—

I would confess he can— I watch Schitt's Creek.

What is it?

Schitt's Creek.

What is that?

Yeah, I don't know.

That's the name of the town. It's not—

we've never— we've never—

stupid. Like a sitcom.

It's stupid.

He doesn't watch it. He doesn't watch it.

Oh, let's clarify.

But I don't— okay, I am so focused. Everything I listen to, it's always like with a purpose. I do not read fiction books ever. Like maybe once every 6 years. I read all non— I don't like them. I don't— I feel— I feel like they're fluffy. It's a total—

like you're not getting something out of Yeah, I don't find them interesting.

I don't care about romance. No, I want to read nonfiction, business, science.

Did you read Where the Crawdads Sing?

No, that's not—

But so I say all that, but when I watch a show at night, I do not want it to be intelligent. I want it to be dry humor, and I just need something stupid.

So that's why I have like room temperature IQ.

No, I like The Office. Did you watch The Office?

We did.

No, we were Seinfeld.

No, we are—

we're a little bit older than you. We're 43.

Yeah, so I'm 42.

Okay, but The Office is the new Seinfeld, I think.

I think so.

Yeah, so what happened was—

I think Seinfeld was better. I watched Seinfeld.

Okay, good.

Seinfeld is better.

It's on Netflix now, by the way.

I will say this though, we got rid of our TV when it wasn't cool to get rid of our TV, right? People—

yeah, you know what, you couldn't watch stuff. You don't have TV and like, no, no, you seriously had to listen to the radio.

Yeah, that was 2005. We got our TV back in 2016 when everybody was like, I don't have my TV anymore. I'm like, we're done, we're done with this, we're ready. I want to watch the Olympics. I missed the Olympics all those years and I want to watch them again. So we got the TV, literally we got the TV for the Olympics. They, they installed it early in the week. The Olympics were starting on Friday. They called me the next day after after they installed it, and they said, how do you like your, your TV, like your TV service? And I was like, oh, I actually haven't even turned it on. They're like, you haven't? Like, well, the Olympics start on Friday.

Why else would we have it?

So the Olympics, that's another one.

But you know, it was hilarious. It was so funny because the lady was like, what?

When we disconnected from DirecTV, we, we literally called, and they're like, why are you disconnecting from DirecTV? Because we don't watch it. Well, how many hours do you watch TV? Well, probably like 1.

They're like, what?

They're like, lost it.

What?

When we canceled DirecTV, they called me back and they said, how can we get you back?

Oh, they called me for like 5 years.

You know, you know what I told them? You can give me $10,000.

Yeah.

And I will get it back. And they were like, yeah, that's not going to happen. I was like, okay, well then stop calling.

Yeah. Bye.

Don't ever call me again.

When you posted that about the books, uh, David Goggins was in there. You, you— I think you intro— I think it was an Instagram story.

I did.

And you said, hey, I'm about to share these books.

Yeah, I was making you nervous.

I was scared. I could tell.

Yeah.

Which, which one or ones were you scared about?

Not David Goggins as much because I'd kind of come through. I'm like, if someone can't handle cussing, then like don't read the book, or just—

yeah, because generally it's totally positive.

It's a totally positive book. It's a life changing.

It's crazy.

Yeah, the biggest one— I was silly, so silly. I was scared about the Rob Bell book. It was, uh, what is the Bible book? Because I had never breathed to anyone I had read Rob Bell, which is again silly because like so many people read him and he's like not exactly like— he's not a Satan worshiper, he's just pretty like just progressive, progressive. Um, sometimes more progressive than I am, to be honest. I don't agree with everything he says, but hey, we can read books that we don't agree with every single thing. Like, it's a magical concept. But anyway, I had never said a word. I was scared to admit it. A couple weeks prior to that Insta Live, I had been talking about books, but in the comments of an Instagram post. And I had said— they're like, what books are you liking? And I just said Rob Bell, blah blah blah. And I was like— I posted it. I was like, I thought it was like on my Instagram. This was a comment, and somebody found the comment. Yeah, DM'd me and said he is a 'He's a heretic,' and the whole spiel, which I know the spiel because I used to give the spiel. Like, I'm not— people think I'm naive about this, darling. I am not naive about— I know, I get it. I used to say it. Um, so that scared me, and I was like, 'I shouldn't have written that in the comment.' And then I'm like, 'No, you should have written that in a comment.' Now I'm gonna go— that scared me so much, I'm gonna put it on the post. I'm gonna put a picture of that.

Maybe this is when she— yeah, it was a good time to push into that Yeah, so then I—

but I didn't have too much push. I had some pushback when I did the video, but not as much as I thought.

What I thought was funny is when I saw the Rob Bell one, I was like, oh, who was that? Yeah, I think he was kind of something. No, no, you're thinking of Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz.

Blue Like Jazz.

He did Velvet Elvis. But I feel like Elvis—

I mean, I'm kind of removed from that world. But it felt like he was hot in the '90s, controversial. And I think a lot of people had to Google him to remember. A lot of people in the comments were sharing my sentiment. They had no idea why I was controversial.

It was hilarious. And he was like, why were you so worried? Because everyone's like, who's Rob Bell? But in my circles, he was like—

Oh, well, he was ours as well. It was like, I can't believe you're reading that book. I mean, I didn't read the book. No, it's too— it's too, like, too much for me. I just, like, I know what I believe and, like, whatever. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

But one thing that is— that, that captures my curiosity is Rob Bell. He's obviously very— whether you agree with him or not, he's very intelligent. Well, Francis, you know, when I— when I'm Googling this, well, Francis Chan You guys know who that is?

Yeah, I read his books too.

Also a very intelligent, smart guy, wrote books, has a rebuttal for it.

Yep.

Two very smart guys just disagree.

Yep.

And that's okay.

But he did say they met in the airport once and had a great time.

Yeah.

He and Francis talking with each other. So that's cool.

Yeah. But I think that, well, that just in itself right now is like polarizing. To not agree with somebody.

Why it makes me so curious is two smart people can disagree.

Yes.

So who's right? And who do you think you are to get on and DM you?

Yeah.

And say he's a heretic?

Yeah.

Who do you think you are when they're smart people? Very smart. I'm not saying they're not smart, but yeah, how can you be so definitive?

And that's— that was my thing because I used to be so definitive. Like, I was the most—

that's God had a favorite. Were you God's favorite?

Yeah.

And he's giving you the insight and everybody else not?

Absolutely. I believe that.

You felt that?

To the death. Not like me personally his favorite, but like my denomination was the only one.

Okay. There was— so you guys had it figured out.

Yeah.

This brings—

like, I, I, I proselytize. I— we used to knock doors as a kid. Like, I've confronted people about all kinds of things. I was super obnoxious, not fun to be around. But I was so very well—

so God had a favorite and it was that denomination.

Yeah.

And so the other denominations weren't making it.

Like, yeah, even like very close sister denominations. Wow.

Still weren't making it.

We're not making it. No way.

Interesting.

Yeah. So like, that's why getting out of the black and white and like being able to go, yeah, smart people actually way before my denomination was ever even thought of there were people, you know, hundreds of years ago who had different thoughts about this that we've never even considered, and you guys are so stuck in your pigeonhole. Like, that has all been very eye-opening.

Yeah. Now you can see maybe why they're so passionate. If they really believe—

if you really believe that, you can see why then they're so concerned. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And it's easier— it's easier to be black and white. Like, I understand the draw. I, I totally understand it. It's just It takes a lot of work to sit in the gray of anything— food, like farming methods, religion, politics. Like, it's just easier to find a camp. Just go sit in the camp. You don't have to think as much because it's already been decided.

Well, and there's camp leaders who are championing that cause that you can easily hide behind. If you sit in the gray area, then you automatically become—

you're a loner.

Yeah, you're on somebody else's radar, which makes that hard.

Yeah. One of your newer projects, Freedom Foundry. How does that— what is the Freedom Foundry? This first time I've heard of it.

Yeah.

And I'm sure this first time others have heard of it. What is it and how does it play into all that's going on with your life right now?

So as I was kind of working through like, how do I want to share all the parts of who we are and what has made us who we are with the world, you know, beyond just I'm always going to have the canning courses and bread instructional videos and stuff, but like, how can we share that next level but still have it be congruent with what we've done? Um, we started to talk about, you know, we have this, I feel like our life is just like you guys. It's, it's pretty unique. It's pretty incredible. The amount of independence and freedom we have from the typical societal norm. Like we've kind of paved our own path and it gives us a lot of awesome independence being able to just pick up and even come here. Like we went on a 10-day vacation. We didn't have to ask bosses for permission. We didn't have to ask schools for permission. We didn't have to worry about finances. We just were like, let's just rent an RV, pack up the dog and the kids and go. And I feel like a lot of people are kind of seeking for more freedom right now. They're just questioning, which I think is a really good thing. People are questioning. They're starting to poke around these systems. And so Freedom Foundry is just help us sharing more of our path. You know, how did we set up our finances? To allow us to do this? How did we start our businesses that allowed us to do this? The, the educational piece, the medical piece, you know, the health piece, the food piece. So it's homesteading kind of on steroids, just that next level. We're bringing in some experts. And so it's not just me. Some of it's beyond my pay grade. So I'm bringing in experts to bring their voices and—

Is this a member area?

It's a members area. Yeah. There's a different topic this month. Yeah.

Okay.

Different topic. There are interviews, there's Q&As, there's playbooks. Books, the whole nine yards.

Are you enjoying yourself?

Yeah, it feels good. It feels good. And then when I still am, you know, so inclined, we'll talk about some heavy-duty sourdough Q&As. But then we're also talking about how to leave your mortgage, how to open up pod schooling opportunities, how to, um, work around traditional health insurance, and how— what are your options looking outside?

Was that the plan when you began to change brand, ending up at Freedom Foundry, or did that come as you as you freed yourself up as an individual brand.

Because my initial fear, one of them of many, when I talked to my coach, I'm like, I can't pivot my brand. I don't have anything to create around it. There's nothing to create around it. And he's like, doesn't matter. Just, you know, you're supposed to do it, so do it and it'll come later. And so I did. And then this—

get out of your head and into your heart.

And this came.

So do you listen to everything your coach says?

No, I do not. I do not.

How do you know when you should not listen?

I don't know.

Sometimes it just like, that doesn't resonate.

Comes back to your gut.

I come back. Yeah.

I'm like, do you listen to everything he says?

There's been times where literally she's like, I don't want to do this and I know I shouldn't do this, but somebody wants me to do this and so I have to do it. Wait a minute. Every single time you do this and you go against your gut, you hate yourself for a week.

So does your coach— I mean, he's getting paid whether you do what he says or not. So it doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

Yeah, he's good.

Just the one thing is— He doesn't say anything. What about it?

The coach?

No, he knows. Like, he honors— the thing I like about this coach, and a good coach I think will do this, he's always— he respects intuition. So he'll often say— sometimes I'll be sitting there, he'll be explaining something to me, and he's like, okay, we're not talking about this anymore because I can tell you're not— this is not vibing with you. Or he'll go, how does that feel to you? And I'll be like, I don't like that. And he's like, okay, then don't do it. I respect that a lot.

That's smart.

Yeah.

Which he's good at. But he can also see a lot of times the bigger picture that we can't see. I mean, that's the whole idea behind having a coach is having somebody who's been through something that they've already done what I'm trying to do. They've already been up this ladder and I'm trying to get up this ladder. And it doesn't mean that your coach is going to help you go 30 steps up that ladder. It might mean he just helps you get up one rung. All right. You know, if you think back from where you were 10 years ago or where you were a year ago and all the problems that you had, if you'd have just had somebody that said, here, do this, this, and this and trust the process and it'll make your life easier.

Yeah.

You might have went and said, well, I don't want to do this. This is scary. This doesn't seem right. It doesn't feel right. You know, whatever. But he's still been there. He's still gone through it. He still knows it. You just have to trust it.

Yeah, I need a coach that has experience in the streaming platform. Yeah, remember, I need to take Abundance Plus to the next level. Yeah, it's gone to the great— a great level, but it's still primarily driven by my marketing influence. And it'd be really cool. We don't want to get with somebody who's already grown a platform like that exponentially without one influencer, so to speak, right? That's what I'm going to be— people out there working on and thinking hard in 2022 is taking to next level without putting me on the marketing treadmill.

Yes, yes.

For those of you who really are, you getting off that treadmill, trying to get some more optimization, some more networking. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I think we'll wrap it up, but we— folks should definitely check out Freedom Foundry memberships. I think that's the future. People are opting into— they're quitting the TV. It's cool now to quit TV.

Yeah.

And instead you go to memberships, you go to streaming platforms, you, you cancel your cable and you get Netflix, you get Abundance Plus, you get Discovery Plus, you, you get Freedom Foundry, which is so much more, I think, than just videos. It sounds like. So, uh, that's it too. Somebody was like, you know, how do I compete with Netflix? I was inspired by Netflix and try to create a platform like that. We did, but I can't— I would be stupid to go try and defeat them.

Yeah.

And it happened at the business conference. Somebody pointed out, you have— you in that situation, well, you essentially niche-ify and you submit— you, you you serve a market that's underserved that Netflix isn't touching.

You're almost like red— you're, you're blue ocean off the red ocean. Yeah, because if you were trying to do— yeah, Netflix serves everyone basically, so if you're trying to compete with that, that'd be a disaster. But yeah, Netflix won't feature the type of wholesome stuff you're doing because it's not, it's not, you know, comment on the video. Yeah, right.

So, and so I was I went, you're right, it was the blue ocean, red ocean thing you were talking about. The blue ocean, or most people are in the red ocean, right?

Yeah.

Or most things. And you have to pick something, uh, that nobody's quite doing. How are, how are they underserving? And where Netflix isn't going to go is they're not going to have a community area. No, there's no texting access if you have any questions. There's not any instructional videos. Yeah, right.

And it's just a different, completely different genre, of course. I mean, they don't have quite that same wholesome, like family. Some other shows do, but not— that's not what it's focused around.

Yeah. So, all right.

Yeah.

So we'll wrap it up with this question, uh, that I— which is going to be what next, but I didn't miss anything. You guys want to add anything?

I don't think so. No.

Okay.

Covered good ground. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So then what's next?

Um, for me, it's working on the book, another, another book.

Okay.

So that'll be— that won't come out till 2024. 2023.

So what's the name of that book?

Tentatively, you know how it goes, Old Fashioned on Purpose.

Is this what you want it to be named?

It is. This— I want it to be named Old Fashioned.

And are you going to be insistent on that?

Is he going to be assistant?

No, you insistent.

Oh, I'm gonna be—

I will fight pretty hard.

And I— it's pretty much in— I think everybody knows, like, that's what it's named. But if I do get pushed back, I will probably throw quite the tantrum over if they try to change the I don't think they will. I think we'll be okay. Famous last words.

But I was gonna name my book Your Best Homestead Ever.

It's not that. Yeah.

And what happened was, so we started out being everything. We were giving guides to everything, how to do everything. They were like, we want to get this to 40,000 words. I don't know. I'm like, yeah, bouncing forth. This is one thing I've enjoyed about about the publishing experience is that it's a team.

Yes.

Even though I'm a control freak and just want to do everything, it has been good because then it's like the publisher and my agent kept pushing for lifestyle. Like, they wanted this in Target. There's nothing wrong with Premier One magazine, but Premier One magazine's books, you know, would only be homesteading books. Yeah, they wanted me to be Target.

Yeah.

And said push me for lifestyle. But then when I started writing about lifestyle, like how to get your children involved, how to, how to not feel like a weirdo when you're doing these things, how to be a good husband, and that's what the pen started flying.

Yes.

Yeah, he loved that part. He's like, I really like this.

Yeah.

And then we could—

glad we didn't—

it wasn't going to be that. And we— there was a— oh, so we narrowed it down. Oh, it can't be the— you know, before we started discovering the lifestyle stuff, it's like, oh, let's just do chickens and gardens. All right, I want to name this The Chicken Garden Miracle. Article.

Yeah.

But then it steered into the lifestyle.

Yeah.

And I got on the phone with the publisher. So I got a name. Let's get on the phone. And I said, well, okay, what's it going to be? And she said, The Looted Life.

I said, okay.

I didn't want to shoot it down, right? Okay, I'll think, let me think about, let me think about that. And I was thinking on the phone, I wrote it down. I'm thinking they really don't get this. This is not like a gardening publisher, this is a mainstream publisher. So I'm thinking, yes, don't get this.

Yeah.

And by the end she said it again or something. Oh, she said The Rooted Life.

Big difference.

That makes sense. I love it. And by the way, her husband thought of it, so yeah.

Oh wow, yeah, that's awesome.

That's cool.

It pins down the book a little bit more. I don't know why I say that, but I feel like the old-fashioned on purpose, it's nailing it.

I'm looking forward to it.

I would like— I was really flexible with the cookbook title, and I'm being real flexible with the flow of the book. Like, it's already changing. I love, I love that process. I love when you have the collaboration and it turns into something even better than you ever thought. But I don't know, they'd have to come up with something pretty good to—

can I say this? I hope I can say this. We can exit if you don't want to say it, but yeah, there was a point, I think it was around the cookbook time, we— it was at Homesteaders of America. You came to our house after the event And you said you wanted to be an American brand.

Yeah, yeah.

But a year later, not so much.

Yeah, I—

what happened there?

It's been a weird— I don't know, I don't know. Like, what people sometimes— sometimes maybe people realize this, maybe they don't— I'm, I'm a super, like, driven— like, I, you know, in the cookbook, people—

you want to be the Pioneer Woman.

I wanted to be the Pioneer Woman. I'm like, I'm gonna I'm going to take on Joanna Gaines. Like, let's do this. I want bigger, bigger, bigger, national, national, national. And then I still have— because people are like, I used to always be able to just spit out exactly what we're doing next when people would ask me, what's your 1-year, 5-year, 10-year? And I'm like, this, this, this, I'm doing this, this, this. And I've mellowed. I'm still driven. I'm still purposeful. I'm still intense. But I just feel more just like in flow. So now at this point, like, I'm really excited about this book. I'm so pumped. I can hardly sleep about it. About this book.

But, you know, because the Mellow Flow is coming out, the flow's coming out.

Yeah. And I'm like, is it— could it be New York Times? Sure. Yeah, it could. If it doesn't hit New York Times, I'm gonna do everything I can. But if it doesn't, I'm not gonna— I'm just like, it'll serve its purpose. It'll do what it's supposed to do.

Christian, you've been so polite. Why, where are you? So why, why did she go from wanting to be a national brand to slowing down on that a little bit?

I think you're— I, I think it's, uh, probably a combination of you said, but she's also very passionate about the book, and that's got her 100% attention right now. So it's, it's on the—

but the goal for it is not a national brand.

I mean, I don't want the Prairie— I don't really feel the same calling, or calling was the word, like drive for the Prairie Homestead to have its TV show and to have its own lifestyle like that.

I'm like, you didn't want that to be the national brand.

Like, I, I want to be— I feel like even the soda fountain 5 years ago, if we would have bought the soda fountain, I'm going to be like, this is the best dang restaurant in the whole state of Wyoming. And now I'm like, I want the soda fountain to serve the community. I want it to have good food. I want it to be a hub. If it becomes something else, that's great. I'm not going to stop that. But I'm also like not going into it with that same intention. And it feels peaceful and it feels good. It's still— I'm still pushing it forward. I'm still like, I'm not just sitting there like a limp noodle hoping it comes together.

Are you guys happy? Yeah, well then why risk messing that up?

I mean, yeah, we're, we're following what lights us up and we're— I like to be challenged. I'm definitely challenged, but I don't feel like I have to go prove something to someone anymore. I did for a time. I was trying to prove something. I don't need to prove anything.

We're good.

Like, life is good.

So we got a lot to look forward from you guys next. You are flexible. You know, you're going to be on our show. You're going to be on our show Divergence.

Yes.

And that's where at some It's off the Robert Frost poem. People love it. People, you come to a decision and you end up taking this lesser path, and it's hard. It's— we hopefully will dig into the struggles of why it's, it's hard taking this path. It's, it's fear. It's fearful. It's embracing fear. It's being alienated. It's, it's, it's having the need to hire coaches. This is not an easy path. It's putting yourself in the public eye. But then hopefully at the end of the day, as the poem ends, this has made all the difference. And here you two sit here and tell me you're happy. And I feel like your story is so exciting because you're diverging from— you're in a divergence. And I don't know what this conversation will be like when we have you back in 5 years.

Yeah. And I used to—

hopefully it's not 5 years. Could you guys—

I mean, we'll come back before 5 years for sure. Yeah.

And hopefully we come to you.

But I think, I think in the past I would have told you, well, it's— and this is exactly what I see happening in 5 years. And I don't, I, I don't know, but I feel good. I feel like, bring it. Like, let's do it.

I think in the past that used to cause a lot of stress. You know, you're sitting there worried about, well, can— it's not that you can't set milestones or targets or goals. But, you know, you're worried about can those things happen, where now it's more we just know things are going to happen.

Yeah.

So it's just less stress.

You just maybe have more experience.

I think so.

You're—

so you're just like letting it flow as opposed to like creating, forcing. Yeah.

A lot of people's divergent stories are I got sick, I got into homesteading. Those are good.

Yeah.

Or uh, I bucked— well, it was your, your divergent story early on. I, I started questioning things. But where I hope and think we'll go with this, I think that that's one divergence that's important. But I think we'll go with this, where you're, you're now mature enough and you created this homesteading brand. You're now mature enough to actually be diverging from that. Yeah, you're not diverging from homesteading, you're still homesteading. Yeah, right.

Yeah, totally.

But you are diverging from at a time this is all I want to be, all I had, all I can show I am, to now, no, there's something even better than that.

Yeah.

And life's not all about homesteading, and that's okay.

That's okay. Yeah, it's like a little—

I think it's growing up, and people will relate to that. Yeah, you're growing up.

Yeah.

So that's going to be neat to get to capture y'all's divergence in that way. So thank you.

Thank you for doing that.

Yeah, thank you.

Absolutely. I'm excited.

Yeah.

All right.

Peace.

He's loving Mason jars.

That's a wrap.