Meet the Man Who’s OFF the (food) GRID

I just spent 3 days with Josh Thomas, and I can say after that, the man is a relentless visionary hard worker. Good morning!

What's up, Mr.

Roots? You got some energy this morning.

I'm excited, man.

That's good.

Get to hang out and do your chores.

I know, you get to do somebody else's chores for once. That's like a vacation, man.

It is like a vacation.

You got milk cows, Josh?

Yeah, we got a dairy cow.

Okay, nice. Come on, stud. Come on. You know the drill, stud. What do you think about this milk sled, Josh?

I'm liking this milk sled. I want to see it move.

I want to see it.

I want to see how it works.

But nothing too fancy here.

No, no, just simple, right?

Just the shade, half of it, and then the other half— what if it's raining, we're out here milking, trying to make a movie?

Like Joel says, good enough is perfect.

Yeah, this is where I learned it from.

Yeah.

Joe encouraged me to do the mobile milking. Yeah, I like the system, and I will never go back.

I like it.

How many people does it take to milk a cow? As many as we can get. A bunch. We can all be swatting flies. If the aliens come, they wouldn't be sure who was in charge.

This girl's getting maximum attention this morning. She's getting a little extra love.

All right, you're done, girl. Actually, we're drying her off, so We're not gonna milk her today or tomorrow, and then we're gonna milk her one more time, and you're retiring soon, honey. She's been a great cow. She's starting to be on the decline though with the mastitis. To give her her best life ever and to maximize our productivity, we're gonna harvest the ladies before it gets— before it gets too bad. You saw us shopping in a previous video. We've already ordered 2 cows. But we're gonna wait for the timing. Phyllis, we want her to calf, to get about 3 months old before we can— I think it's the earliest you want to wean. And then that's when we'll replace Phyllis, and then we'll do the same for Flossie. You pick up nets at home? Yeah, we do.

We're, we're, uh, this year we'll be doing a lot more. So this property we've been on, we've had a lot of infrastructure to do, so it's gonna be our first year getting back out on pasture, starting to rotate, move things around. But we got lots of nets.

Jonna, how are we gonna move these sheep from there all the way to there without the drama?

With green gold.

That's what the cows think of it. You ever heard that saying, hard times make good men? Well, getting to know him deeper, he's had some hard times growing up, and he chose not to crumble. He chose to look at that and say, I don't want that for my life. And he became a husband and a father and now really has a heart to make the world a better place with his educational material. So Josh, what's your biggest service to the world?

Oh gosh, my biggest service to the world.

I don't know, man.

We're just trying, just like you, I think, just trying to help everybody along on this journey, you know. Yeah, we started a long time ago, like you were saying somewhere the other day, you know, we started with books. Yeah, we didn't have all this YouTube and all this stuff. And I think those of us that are living this life can help out just by sharing it, teaching it, and helping.

Yeah, and that's true.

Rest of y'all out there just hopefully accelerate the journey, right?

A lot of folks know you through the Homesteading Family on YouTube. Yep. Is that the name of your homesteading family? Is that also the name of your company? Uh, Well, is that what you do?

Yeah, well, that's, that's our main business. Yeah, Thomas Cottage Enterprises is Homestead and Family. That's different than School of Traditional Skills and what we've been doing the last few days.

Yeah, you're launching another—

that's another company thing. Yeah, and that's separate because that's gonna, that's gonna involve the whole community of homesteaders, right?

Yeah, yeah. I was put in the middle, Jenna. What do we have here? Maggots. I told him to just collect the eggs in this. He said there's maggots. Sure enough. Hey, but you know who's gonna like those maggots? Why teach folks how to homestead now with this skills course you're coming out with?

Stuff is happening, man, and people are hungry, and it's time to learn. Look, they've been talking about transitory inflation. It ain't going away, folks. I mean, it's, it's getting tougher. Scarcity. I mean, personally, I believe that this is the new normal to some degree. Maybe it won't always be this bad. So there's that side of things, and there's also just the side of family right here, doing all this together, right?

Yeah.

Uh, healthy food, you know, everything. All our systems are degraded. Our family systems are degraded. Our food system's degraded. So like, people talk about going off-grid. We wanted to get off the food grid first. We want to get off the medical grid first. We want to get off the education grid first. That's why. Now eventually, yeah, we'll probably get off the electric grid too, but, but there's a lot of other things to be doing because the world's changing.

Hey, beautiful one! Hey, good morning!

Good morning!

You got this?

Yeah.

All right, Josh, how about you drive? Thomas is gonna lug the trough. Somebody's got to document this. This works definitely better with a camera.

Come on, baby!

Come on!

Look who I got. You salty?

Are you salty?

Take it some salt when I kiss you. Do you keep sheep? Yeah. Oh, you do?

Oh yeah.

How many you got right now?

We got, I don't know, 7, 8 sheep.

Nice. Have they been working out good for you?

Oh yeah, we love lamb, man.

What don't you have? You have pigs?

Nope, we got pigs.

Coonie coonies. You got the old McDonald farm right now, pretty much. You happy now, beefcake? You happy, cupcake? What's your biggest struggle homesteading?

Probably sometimes it's day in, day out, maybe. Ah yes, monotony sometimes. I mean, you know, often there's exciting things happen, but sometimes it's day in, day out.

I gotta let the audience realize you've been filling buckets here for 5 minutes.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and that's just it. That's just sometimes that's the monotony of it. That's what you got to do.

This is a less than a minute segment, you know.

So yeah, you can't always capture. Looks all like no big deal, fill up a bucket, but sometimes it's just—

and then you gotta do the same thing, repetition.

We have been checking their minerals and the only one that they are out of today is one. So I'm just gonna fill that one up. That one's actually the one they're most frequently out of anyways, and so It actually has two slots and both of them are empty. Once you get them all, you know, filled up and ready to go, it doesn't really take that much time, uh, throughout the week just to maintain.

What's going on here, Josh? This is an acre. Okay, so this is their— they were just in here. See how well they've cleared it? Yeah, they're in here for 4 more days.

Open it up.

Yeah, and then they just keep going down the line down there.

Yeah, you can see the difference.

And then By the time they get to spot number 1, they've had— it's had over 80 days rest. They move about every week, 12 days. Yeah, look at these big guys. Good.

Oh yeah, they're growing. What do you got, about 3 months left? Yeah, right up on this right there. Look out!

Now, do you have devil eyes?

Devil eyes?

You have goats? Oh, are you a goater? Oh good, good.

We don't do goats. I didn't know it's once.

That's what Every 20 minutes they were looking in my living room window. Who needs goats? No, I know these guys underbrush and they taste a lot better.

And look, I was just at Joel's place, at Joel Salatin's. Yeah, same, same thing, you know. And the pigs are taking care of the brambles. They'll do the same work.

They stay in this. Yeah, forget it with the goat.

Yeah, no, no, you can have it like this. The goats are still getting out.

So you guys, they got 4 days left in here. This is what it looked like. That's what I'm talking about. Yep. And they're eating that and they're eating the nuts that have fallen. Yeah, so this, Josh— right now I did seed. I did seed. I just sped it up by seeding. You don't have to, but you can speed it up a couple of years by seeding. Yeah, and the pigs— this was as wooded as we were.

Good. Behind the cows in here yet, or are you just letting it fill in?

No, they've been in here. Okay, 2 years, maybe 6, 8 rotations in total. Yeah, they help it come up too. Yeah, sheep too. Next up We're gonna spend a couple hours together. If we didn't know each other already, we will now. We're about to, buddy. You're about to get interrogated. Diving in, right?

We'll be good friends or—

He's like, what are we going to talk about?

Parting ways, one or the other.

Yeah, I know. We're going to hash it out right here. And I said, Matt, what do we talk about on these things? Pretty much everything.

Yeah.

I should ask you this: what would make this a home run for you, this podcast?

Hey, you and I coming out better friends.

There you go.

That'd be a home run.

Yeah. All right, I think we can make that happen. It's over. I think that was almost 3 hours, Josh. Did we hit your home run? Did we hit your home run? Are we closer?

I think we're closer.

What do you think, man? Yep, that was good. Yeah, this might be our last conversation, right, based on the—

yeah, yeah, we're gonna stock in there and we're on the other side of the country, so I don't know who else I'll see you again.

Yeah, we'll have a good hearty goodbye.

We'll stay talking though.

Yeah, for sure. You hungry? For sure.

Oh man, I'm always hungry.

Yeah, that's, that's what's next. You don't got any chicken, do you? Today is lamb. All right, look at you guys. What are you making?

I'm just gonna do raw veggies and dip, and then got potatoes in the oven cooking.

Connor, are you used to helping out in the kitchen? Yep, it's my job. Nice. I come away from this inspired because Josh Thomas is a man that knows his convictions and then stands in them. The quality of this course he's produced, you can't even call it a masterclass or course, like it's, it's beyond that. Like this camera crew, the time we're putting into it, the people he's getting, it's going to be absolutely insane. So I'm going to proudly stand behind School of Traditional Skills when it comes out in the fall. It will totally stand out from the rest. He's setting a new bar and I'm happy to associate with folks like that. I asked what's the biggest struggle, what's the biggest win, what's the biggest reason, victory.

It's those moments coming together with the family and enjoying the fruits of our labor. I think it's that combined with just seeing the next generation. I don't know what they're going to do yet, but right now they, they're enjoying it and we're together as a family and living on the land and growing together, enjoying it together. That's, that's just the sweet spot.

Nice. It's good. It's real good.