Only the BEST Stuff from Homesteaders of America, TN

Cooking a little breakfast. Day 1 of the Homesteaders of America conference. A talk in about an hour and 20 minutes. Rebecca has a talk. I believe it's your debut talk.

I'm so nervous.

You nervous?

Yeah, I'm like afraid that I'm gonna forget everything.

Freeze. All you got to do is say, anybody got any questions?

Yeah, that's what I'm gonna be like. And now is the time, it's a great time to take some questions.

Does anyone have any questions? She'll do fine. This is an intimate event. There's only 300 people and there's like multiple talks going on at once, so I mean, it's only going to be a few people in each talk, I think. So, uh, low pressure, intimate, folks get to ask their questions. I think that's the value here. Not that we're going to stand up there and lecture for 2 hours, but that we might give a little lecture. That's my plan anyway, is might give a little lecture. Mine's on intro to permaculture, give a little lecture and then, uh, but for the most part, take questions, walk around the farm, show the examples. Yeah, take advantage of that. Breakfast of champions. Classic bacon, eggs. You look really good. You even put on makeup. It's a cool light fixture. Oh, we got to straighten this out. Tennessee. Here's the Homestead Hall. I told you, low-key intimate event. Everybody's gonna get a lot of attention today. Like, with this number, we can individual homestead consults. Okay, you can just sit wherever you want, babe. Just wrapped up my talk. I even had to call him out from the, uh, the stage. We got another apron-wearing Permaculture Chicken Ninja master. He's even got the baby in tow. I do, I do. The Just For Men beard, the flat cap. She She wouldn't let me cut it. Had to be a little bit longer like yours, you know. This is what got the camera out. Oh yeah, that's the hay string. We got the race hay string. Gotta be prepared. But I don't have a Leatherman like you. All right, okay, that is great. And that is the best way. Hey, how's it going? Where are you from? Uh, Huntsville, Alabama. Okay, watch it all the time, man. I feel like you're family. You're the ones. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, enjoy the thing this morning too. Okay, good, good. Rory's Garden. Seems like he has some mounds for some mound gardens mixed in compost. Can you hear Henry in the background? Bless his heart. Mom's on it. We've got friends here helping us with him, but he's, he's been such a good baby, guys. We got like 11 and a half hours of sleep last night. Blow that baby a kiss. This BCS tractor— no, I should— yeah, yeah, walking tractor. It's got the plow. Implement on right now. The power harrow. I'd be interested in this thing for the bed shaper. Right now we shape our beds with a shovel, and, uh, yeah, that could save us a lot of time. This especially drew my attention this morning. I love the T-post farm concept. They're using T-posts, a T-post, and— well, this is not a cattle panel, but let's just say it's a cattle panel. It could have been and it's holding up these, uh, the tomatoes can grow up on it. And you could do— oh, he's got cucumbers over there growing up on it. Cattle panels and T-posts can be so affordable. They can be fences, they can be trellises, they can be greenhouse frames. Those things are amazing. A great looking garden. Another BCS tractor. What's on this? I don't know what that one is. Beautiful broccolis. Whoa, look at the head of broccoli, man! This is Rory Feek's own personal garden, I guess, or garden for his school. We're at Rory Feek's homestead. He's hosting this event, so thank you to Rory for that. I'm taking this opportunity to walk around while folks are in class. I mean, that's one of our most favorite parts about this is meeting you all. So I want to be able to meet you guys when you're out of session. And just kind of sneak around and get some of the other interesting things that are going on. Right there. Yep, in there, the beautiful one Rebecca packed out her very first— I think this is her very first public talk.

I'm probably not as creative as he is. Maybe in general.

Over there, I'm not sure what kind of class they're doing, but this event, because it's so small, is really cool because it has a more hands-on experience. And yesterday, Joel Salatin was one-on-one teaching people how to butcher chicken. Not just demo, like come through the line, butcher a chicken. That was beautiful. Huh? Gallbladder. All right, this is exciting. Looks like Rory has taken up the advice of Joel Salatin. He's got his cows moving. He's got them in just single strand electric. That's what's so beautiful about cows. Such a simple infrastructure if that's all you've got is cows. You guys look very happy, huh? You happy cows? You look happy. Oh wow, I like this idea. That's a good idea. I wondered what to do with extra— like if you needed to set this reel down, it's too heavy, having a little kind of a storage bin, a little light storage bin. Boy, Becky would like that. It looks like Rory is doing his own X-frame polyface design. Little X-frame on the, on a smaller scale. Beautiful Premier One net around that. Wonderful. Look at this, look at this water. Okay, plastic waterer boxed in, framed in, and it doesn't have to be big because he's got that, uh, automatic waterer on there. It just refills. They drink it and it just refills. I know from knowing Rory and watching his shows and movies. That's the Joey Feek burial. Isn't that neat? A nice fence and tree around that. Just what a wonderful memorial. Just kind of— she's overseeing, smiling down on this farm. That's cool. You gotta see this. They're butchering a rabbit.

Just wipe it from the backs, from the spine.

There you go.

He actually has a scar on his finger where we had to go to the emergency room during one of our classes because he almost took the finger, tip of his finger off. So we keep our blades extremely sharp. It's important to make sure that you do that because it's gonna— you're gonna get frustrated. Uh, we taught a class one time, had everybody bring their own knives. That was the biggest mistake I ever made because they brought knives that were dull.

And a sharp knife is a humane knife. We got Jason, he's been contracted to make a movie for the Homesteaders Spring Event. What is your vibe so far? What's the What's the story so far?

The vibe is that it's super like, I feel like it's one-on-one time here for people, you know, like they're just here. It's not like the one in October where there's thousands of people. Yeah, there's a few hundred people here, so I feel like it's more of that one-on-one time and it's not so, I guess, congested. But it's good. I think that's what makes it special.

Yeah, right. Yeah, I get that vibe. This is a special VIP ticket holders roundtable, so we're gonna have the speakers up there and these people have intimate question and answer time with us. Hey, this is Rory's Homestead Hall. Let's take a moment and just show you some of the things. I'm up in the balcony. This is cool. Get you guys a different angle. I'm gonna crouch. Oh, here we can stand. That's nice. Cool view. Get you guys an idea of this auditorium. Keep talking, man.

Are you done?

You got me shy now. Come on. I'm gonna vlog you vlogging.

Okay, let's do it.

Alright.

And this is where they have the VIP section with like Justin Rhodes.

Alright, I wanna show you guys the view from the stage. This is what we got going on. You're in the vlog. You're in the vlog. You're in the vlog. You're in the vlog. Woo! After our group Q&A, we ended up— well, I had another lesson teaching chickens, but then we had a meetup and got to meet some of you wonderful people. Use your left arm, Jack, he says. I don't know. Let's see, you try it.

I would say, oh, you know, we gotta do this, we gotta do that. He goes, and then he'll say that to me and I go, well, you know, Justin says, or Joel says, and he's like, I'm done hearing about Joel and Justin.

So he's like, WWJD?

So he's like, you know what, we're gonna name the chickens, like I got new chickens. He's like, Joel and Justin. So he's ready to like, you know. Times and butcher them. He's like, I got no problems, Joe or Justin.

Yes, I'm Philip. Philip, right on. Nice to meet you guys.

Okay, 1, 2, 3. Crystal, nice to meet you.

You're such an inspiration, such a wealth of knowledge, both of you, and I greatly appreciate the information you put out. And Victor Justin. Let's check out the McMurray Hatchery. The folks that send us our chicks. Okay, have you been having a good show, Ginger? Very good. Okay, what makes a good show? People. People.

We're not really talking about sales or anything, we're just meeting people.

They get a lot of catalogs? Yeah, they do. Yeah. Okay, do you meet any crazy chicken ladies? Oh yes. Are you a crazy chicken lady? They're from Iowa too. Do you have a chicken that has a name?

Yeah, I've had a lot of chickens with names.

You might be a crazy chicken lady. You have more than 12. I mean, named one Murray. Do you have more than 12 chickens? No. Okay, you're not a crazy chicken lady. We're safe. We gotta stop by Premier One Fence. Couldn't do what we do without this. Always— oh, you know what, in the talk there, somebody mentioned this. This is amazing, this heat lamp, because it's safe. Traditional heat lamps can be very dangerous. We just had a member actually burn the house down. So for real, I forgot they had this, but look. It's got this guard on it, so if it were to fall, it's not going to burn the chickens, it's not going to burn the bedding. It's got this hanging up. I like to put my feed and water under that so the chickens will be warm when they go out to eat. And at night, you know, when they're not eating, these hover brooders— it's like a mama hen. We have these hover brooders in our— we kind of do a mix between heat lamps and this. You put these hover brooders down, chicks go under there, it's warm like mom. So in nature chicks would get under mom to be warm. So that's what's going on here. This is interesting— a nipple water on top for chicks. I never thought of that. We might try that. Walking around a little bit with Henry now. Another cool thing, a one-room schoolhouse, like the old days, like Laura Ingalls Wilder days. For real though, kids actually go here and will go here all the way up through 12th grade. Right beside it, a hobbit house. I gotta at least get this shot for My kids were reading The Hobbit, and here's a real-life hobbit house. Isn't that cool? Grass on top and everything. Tennessee's been good to us.

It has been.

It's been nice to see people again, hasn't it?

I know.

So Rebecca, somebody watching this who has not been here, they haven't heard from you in this show yet.

Okay.

What is— how can you sum up the entire experience for somebody trying to understand it through the camera?

It's just so hard. Like, if you haven't attended a event like this, then you won't understand it. It's just there's so much energy and like-minded people in one place that all want to do this homesteading thing, and so there's just an energy there that you can't describe. My heart is for that all people who do this lifestyle or have this desire can come to an event like this one or the one in October and come and just get their cup filled. There was people talking to each other and becoming friends. Some of them found out they lived close to each other. Some of them didn't.

I think some of them were finding out for the first time they're not as crazy as they thought they were. Yeah. Yeah. Because all you people, all your friends and family think you're nuts.

Yeah.

But here you're totally normal.

It's very normal. Everything, yeah, I mean, it's almost like a little bubble. Right now I'm looking into a camera lens, but you guys are on the other end of that.

Now we're imagining your faces.

And now I can see people's faces that I talked to and that I shook hands with. I got to meet and I know your stories and I know what you're going through and I can just— I don't know, my heart is just so happy.

Yeah.

Like, I'm very happy.

She mentioned October. There is another one. We look forward to that. I don't, I don't think we have any event— we don't have any events planned for ourselves until October. Correct. We like being on the farm. But we would love to meet you guys, and October will be here before you know it. And that one's not as intimate. That one's, I think, as many as 2,500 people.

So many people that the fairgrounds—

Homesteaders of America. You could get it on their Homesteaders of America website. I'll leave the link down in the description.

Well, this year you cannot buy tickets at the door, so if you're gonna come, you need to get tickets.

Can I get tickets now?

They can get tickets now online. And I would also highly suggest booking your hotel room or Airbnb.

And we got no commission from that. They are paying us to go and speak there, but We just like it so much. We just want to share with you guys and want you to be there because we want to meet you guys. It's so nice meeting you guys.

It is. And Amy and her staff have done a wonderful job with this conference, making sure that everybody feels welcome and that everybody gets what they came to get out of the conference. So go and support Homesteaders of America, and hopefully we'll see you in October.

All right.