Tara - Slowdown Farmstead on the Real Canada and Meat Consumption

you know, I told him, I was like, this lady that I'm following on Instagram, she's carnivore, she has Lyme disease, and she's like getting better from it. And so I told him that for like 2 years. I was like, you should do this. And he was like, uh, you know, not really into it. And then he had to have a dental procedure and that he needed to rest. And, um, so he actually watched Shawn Baker on Joe Rogan, and that was when he was like, um, wait, hold on, this—

oh, did it cut out?

It did.

Um, hit that about every 20 minutes.

Okay. Um, that's when he got serious about doing carnivore. And so it's all because you, you shared about that on Instagram, just this little, you know, snippet of your life that he's, he's now shifted over, and it has helped him, you know. I mean, we haven't seen— you hear about the people who like were eating the standard American diet and then, you know, switched to a very nutrient-dense diet and like had like miraculous healing in 30 days. We've not seen that. Um, but he has— he is better.

And when I behave myself, I can control the inflammation and at least not balloon in my weight, which maybe is a good sign of lowering inflammation. Uh, I do got to say this, you said before we hit record that you enjoyed our content because we showed, uh, we would show the, the, the mess-ups, the failures, the ugly, the, the messes around the house. You know, I will say, Tara, when I'm following— she mentioned, you know, we got turned on to, uh, carnivorism through you, but through Shawn Baker and others. When I see— and you said it's actually encouraging to see us fail, it almost seems attainable what we're doing, the good things. When I see somebody I'm following, I won't name any names, online or whatever, Thanksgiving Day, they're posting their steak and that's all they ate. It's, it's like, it's, it's, it's— I know what you're talking about. It's defeating. Like, you aren't going to cheat on Thanksgiving. I mean, Thanksgiving's a big deal in America, right? So, uh, and when we say cheat, we just eat like—

oh, I know you're not talking there.

We're not like— we're not eating like major junk.

But like, is most people's diet. Yeah. Or, or— yeah, most people's strict diet. We're talking about gluten-free biscuits.

Like, well, you know, he'll eat a biscuit or cornbread stuffing that's like homemade, like really good corn, corn, you know, like, come on, you won't even eat a turkey.

You're carnivore, you could eat a turkey. Don't be this tough guy that like nobody can attain to. So I want you to tell me, Tara, what's your kryptonite? Please tell me you have one. Mine's chocolate and peanut butter. I'll just give it to you. I'm not giving it up. I'm just gonna write it on my tombstone. Death by peanut butter.

I'll say homemade ice cream.

He likes that too.

Yeah, but see, you're making homemade ice cream from your cow. It's probably A2A2.

Yes.

Probably sweeten it with honey.

Grass-fed.

You probably only feed it out.

I know, right? I know that's because like when I say like we cheat, like when I'm with my girlfriends and I'm like, yeah, I mean, like we cheated and they all just crack up and they're like, Rebecca, your cheat is not a cheat. Like, because I'll be like, you know, we had ice cream, homemade ice cream.

And they're like, that can kind of, that can kind of, when you're in the wrong mindset, get you down a little bit too though. Like, I don't know if you find that, Justin, but like like that idea, like, you know, oh, I can't even have like this nutritious whatever that everyone else can have.

Yeah.

And so I'm constantly like trying to reframe that. Not constantly, but I mean, in those situations, if I'm feeling like, you know, everyone's got this and I'm not going to eat that, I'm— I, you know, if you're, if you're blue or you're having a hard day, it's pretty easy to get a little sad for yourself because exactly what you just said. This is really like what I can't eat? Are you kidding me? Like, my people would be thriving on this and it's causing me inflammation. So, well, I mean, it's crazy.

You know what I'm talking about.

Vegetables cause inflammation.

I don't crave vegetables though. Vegetables are not a struggle.

When we tell people that vegetables cause inflammation, they're like, what? And I'm like, I don't know. I mean, he, he, you know, like a little bit of background on him, he We recently found he has a Babesia infection, which we knew about the Bartonella and the Borrelia, but we didn't know about the Babesia. And so now, you know, we're treating that, and hopefully it's going to— you've got him on an herbal regimen. We're— he's actually started doing hyperbaric chamber last week to see if that can't help speed things along. But, um, so yeah, it's like when I tell people vegetables cause inflammation, they're like What? Aren't you supposed to eat vegetables?

I'm like, well, so Tara, when you go to— what is your fam— does your family eat like you do?

They will eat meals of carnivore. Yeah. So are you saying carnivore?

Do they ever— does your family ever eating something with— in front of you that, that you probably— that you shouldn't have, that you find yourself wanting?

Sure, let's say potatoes.

Okay, so they eat potatoes. You want the potatoes.

Yeah.

How do you get out of that mindset of I can't have this, poor me?

Um, I just— it seems if I'm really looking at the potato and I want potato, I'd say 1 time out of 10 I'll eat the potato.

Okay.

And then I feel like hell because I haven't been able to eat nightshades in 20 years. I know this about myself. Nightshades are— this long before I had Lyme, I made the connection with nightshade vegetables. So, you know, maybe more like 1 time in 50, I'm going to be honest, that I'll eat the potato because we just don't eat them all the time. But if it's like this roasted potato and duck fat and it's got coarse salt on it and it's just singing to me, pop a couple in my mouth, and then, um, the next day it's just like I'll wake up and go to go to bed and be like, what? And then I'm like, ah, the potato.

Wow.

Um, it's so So by this time in my evolution, I can pinpoint exactly what I did the day before that gives me grief the next 2, 3, 4 days. So that really helps to curtail things. Like you don't quite see the potato as the lovely little friend you once saw. It's kind of like we're kind of frenemies, you and I. Like I know there's a price to pay. For that. And tomorrow I'm like cleaning out the chicken barn and I need to be able to shovel without my back killing me and my hands swelling up. So it's just not worth it. It's sort of like connect what I need to do with if I'm willing to pay that price, I guess.

Yeah, I almost wish mine was that acute. I'll eat— it's not. It's like nothing, nothing like crushes me like that.

Nothing like causes it. To like—

because people will say maybe, maybe a spike in weight gain, but nothing.

If you eat the birthday cake, the next day you're gonna pay for it. He doesn't. He doesn't have that. And it's like, it's frustrating because I wish he did. It would be easier. Yeah, but it's not.

It's—

it is like he'll have like what we call a crash like every couple of— not every couple of weeks, every 6 weeks. He'll like just get— he'll like retail— like feel bloated and retain weight and just kind of be sleepy. But other than that, like, did you ever—

Justin, did you ever like just do strict, strict, strict carnivore for like 60 days, nothing else?

You know, 60 days, no. I did 30 days and I did eat ice cream on the weekend, which was the, the raw milk ice cream. So no, I haven't done it 60 days.

I recommend.

Yeah. And when you say strict carnivore, are you talking about no chicken? Because there's some people that are leery of chicken and pork because they eat so much grain.

You know, I would, I, I would not say don't eat it. I'd say make that your treat and try and stick with ruminant meat as much as you can, you know.

So like, what about yogurt and stuff? Dairy? No, not even yogurt.

No ice cream on weekends.

No yogurt. It's my, uh, yogurt's my dessert. That's just plain yogurt. That's what's crazy.

No sweetener.

I think that's like a nice little treat.

Uh, eats yogurt with no sweetener.

Yay! Okay, I'll think about it.

I mean, you find sweet in things when you get rid of sweeteners too, but I would really try doing that for 60 days and then see With the goal, with the goal of that when you do introduce things, not that this is your life forever, but that when you introduce things, you might be more tied into those specific triggers. But if you have a bunch of static going on, like, like your, yeah, your ice cream is sweetened with what?

Honey.

Honey. Yeah. Like, you know, it could be a problem or might not be, but I mean, a week isn't even enough time to clear it. So if you're like eating it one week and then the other week, weekend. Yeah, okay, still got that static throughout the week, you know what I mean?

I just— I, I see he's always like, I wish the whole family would eat carnivore. I'm like, I, I personally feel better eating some vegetables. Like, I do. And I don't eat a— I mean, I, I don't eat like a ton of vegetables, but like, I do.

She actually likes that. I do actually like the taste of vegetables. We're not talking about everybody likes potato. I'm talking about like broccoli and kale. You, you like the taste of this?

I like broccoli, zucchini, broccoli zucchini salad. I do like— I love tomatoes too. Like tomatoes are my kryptonite. Like I know that's weird. I actually went on like autoimmune, like autoimmune paleo diet.

Yeah.

Well, there's, there's some flowers in there too, but, um, Like, yeah, so I love tomatoes. So actually, I had went to a practitioner. He put me on the AIP diet in the middle of summer, which my tomatoes were like just about to ripen. And I was like, I can't eat tomatoes. I went 6 weeks without eating tomatoes that were growing in my front yard. It was so sad to me. And I never felt worse. I actually felt totally horrible on it. And when I met back with him, I was like, look, I feel worse than I did. I wasn't eating eggs. You know, like you can't eat anything on that diet. And I was, and I was like, I feel worse than I did 6 weeks ago when I started it. And he was like, okay, you're missing something in your diet that you were actually eating that helped you. And I went right back to the tomatoes. I was like, give it all to me. I went straight out and started picking out off of my plant. I mean, it's growing in your front yard. It's like, Tomatoes are my— they're, they're my favorite.

Tara, my goodness, if I could get the family on board— let you know this, because if we could just eat meat, all we're ordering to be shipped to us is Redmond salt.

I know, that's it.

And we grow all our own meat, except we order some fish once a week. We do order fish because we can't grow, but you could totally do without that. There, there's an appeal there, isn't there, Tara, that this way of eating will take less time, less thought and preparation, wouldn't you say?

Not the way Tara eats. I've seen, I've seen her Instagram. I've seen it and it's amazing. I'm like, I want to go to Tara's house.

Well, I get what you're saying because it could be just that simple. A little bit of salt, you know, grill up your meat or broil it or whatever you want to do. And it's done. So yeah, it could be as simple as that. I think a lot of people on that carnivore diet do it that way. I like to, I lose my mind if that's how I had to eat every single day. So I like to mix it up.

Have you thought about writing a cookbook?

Forget it, girl. That's never happening. Okay.

So not a cookbook. I don't want to say a cookbook because I don't, I, we, Justin wrote a book, we put 10 recipes in it and it was a nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare.

Nobody wants to write a cookbook.

Okay, so it should be a different type of cookbook. It's like a way of eating book. Like, it would be mainly words. It would be chapters. It wouldn't be like— I don't know. I mean, I know you're doing Substack, which I have read, but I need more.

Aren't you writing a book, Tara?

I'm writing a book, but it's not a cookbook.

Can you talk about what it's about?

It's just a series of essays or short stories about sort of how I got to where I am, but it's not really about me. So sort of like I have a story on like my first animal harvest, and then there's a story about sort of learning to immerse myself and weave myself into the natural cycles of nature. Just sort of stuff like that, reconnecting with the earth. Because like you guys, like, I didn't, you know, I didn't inherit a farm. I didn't, I didn't get taught all this stuff, although I grew up on a farm until I was quite young. But I didn't know a thing. So it's like reclaiming all those things and, and getting back in touch with the authentic and the genuine in life. And yeah, just so a bunch of like short stories that sort of focus around that theme, life and death, a lot of stuff about death, because I think it is really one of the biggest hindrances to almost everything in our evolution as human beings. I mean, just look at the pandemic and the extremes people went to to avoid death or whatever. They decided not to live, right? Like, so those are the same themes that I write about a lot, I think, on Instagram too, or I used to more, but now more on Substack. Stuck.

Yeah.

When you say death is a hindrance, you're not saying the actual death, it's a hindrance, it's what's stopping us. You're talking about, uh, the fear of death.

Yeah, exactly.

Or our relationship with death.

Yeah. Or avoidance of death. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, the last 2 years have taught us that.

Yeah. So what have you learned particularly from the last 2 years?

Wow, just how extreme it is. I mean, you know, when I first went on Instagram, I went on there because, um, and started sharing. At that time, I was sharing, um, pictures of animal harvest, and every single one of them got censored. You weren't allowed to do that, and there wasn't very many people doing that at that time. And the vegans came en masse, and it was interesting just to detach emotionally from like the attacks and just listen to what people were actually saying. And I thought, holy smokes, like we've got a problem in this society because even the people that were supportive would often say, you know, wow, you're brave, or I could never do that, or, you know, I mean, you know, and I understand that sentiment a lot, but I've always been the type of thinker that doesn't stop at that point. Like, oh, you're brave. I could never do that. Well, then what? Like, then what do you need to do? Like, and that's how I am. And my husband's very much that way too. You know, if I get the feeling like, whoa, like that's something beyond my capability, my next thought is, what do I need to make it not so? You know, so I think we need— but in our culture, we're taught when you have a feeling that's scary, or we say negative, but I think negative encompasses a whole wide range of feelings that are necessary and are there to prompt us to push beyond our limits and grow. But we've been taught that like our feelings are governors of our lives, and that when we have a feeling like I could never do that. Oh, well, I could never do that. And so I'm always trying to sort of push that a little bit, like, well, because— and I understand it because I was like that at one time as well. And I had an incredible mentor that completely transformed my life. And I want to give that gift to other people. Because if we don't have that governor over our life, that governor of fear, and if we can be okay with failing and screwing things up, I mean, it's better for all of us. It's better for me if my neighbor is like that. It's better for me if you're like that, and for you that I'm like that, because we can evolve and move as, as a society, a culture, as humanity. And so, um, I think I went off on a tangent there.

That's good, we like tangents. 3 more questions.

No, yeah.

Because I have no questions planned. So tangents are welcome, because we're just having a conversation. So did you— when you— well, let's talk about you. That's fascinating how you, you know, people saying, oh, I could never do that. And you saying you have this ability to push through and be brave. So, and then you mentioned appendix. So let's, let's go there. How— what was your reaction early on? I mean, 2-ish years ago, when it seemed like nobody knew what was going on? I mean, could this be smallpox? You know, could this be something that's really bad? You know, 30% of people, you know, what was this mindset? You just spoke to me? How did you handle yourself in the very beginning when we didn't know?

Well, in the very beginning, I think like most people, we were like, okay, we gotta, you know, we are going to comply, we're going to do what we need to do this. Nobody knows how dangerous this is. I started scrabbling up all I could figure out about what we did know about it. And then I was actually making sure I had the right herbs and tinctures all squirreled away. So I was— if I didn't have the tinctures, I was making things and ordering herbal medicines and stuff like that to make the tinctures. We were, you know, with— we were worried about the girls and we were, you know, making sure that— so I think just like a lot of people at the beginning. We were like, okay, what do we need to do here? Do we have like the supplies that we need? You know, how much— my thing is always like, I'm a hoarder of salt, right? So I'm like, how much salt do we have? And you know, if we run out of Redmond salt in the house, I've got feed bags full of Redmond salt in the barn, right? So I don't care, I'll eat cow salt, no problem. But like, so it was just stuff like that. I think the same thing that probably most people were thinking early on. But then that changed, of course, as time went on.

Right? You didn't— you, you— I take it that you, you funneled that fear. Because you, you're a little nervous, or you wouldn't have gone about doing that. You funneled that into action, maybe a plan, speak. Were you ever— were you ever overwhelmed with fear? Or have a hard time sleeping because of anything like that?

No.

Okay.

No, I'm just like, when I'm, when I'm feeling like insecure, fearful, or if I'm not certain of something, I like to do the things I can, and then I have to surrender to the rest. Like, and, and it really is a feeling of surrender. Like, I'm gonna do everything I possibly can to take care of us and our family and, um, you know, the people in our community. And then at that point, I have to be able to just say, I, you know, I can't control everything.

So yeah, well then, um, I should go herbal medicine before we go down the, uh, the path here, because let's go— let's do a sidetrack to herbal medicine. We're backing up. Being a carnivore-based person, animal-based diet, You did speak about herbal medicine. I don't know if there's enough out there, you know. I don't know. We follow Shawn Baker, we follow, uh, Carnivore MD, uh, The Liver King, some of these more popular carnivores. But what about medicine? What about when you're sick? Do you go to—

go to plants?

Just—

you got some, some wrong with your liver, do you just start eating more liver? Do you do that thing, or you go kidneys for kidneys? Or do you— uh, Rebecca got me some antler, uh, no, elk antler. So there's this— there is this animal-based medicine. There's manuka honey. Do we go there, or do we go to— do herbs have a role? And how's that different than actually eating those herbs?

Well, I think because of my life experience— so like, our oldest daughter is 29, and when she was born, uh, within that first year, so she got her first set of vaccines and had an adverse reaction to them. And so I was sort of like thrown into a world I wasn't all that familiar with. And so I, you know, took homeopathic course. I started taking herb courses. I started looking into all these different things. And anyway, there was all these sort of things. So I'd say for almost 30 years, we've used plant medicines. And I, my kids have never been on medications. They've never, they've never had like any visits to the doc. They went to, one went to the emergency room because she broke her finger in rugby and another one broke her wrist. But other than that, so I, it is just part of the flow of our life. To use medicines. And it doesn't mean I'm taking stuff all the day at all. That's not how I use them. But I do, like, I know maybe there's some debate back and forth. For me, they're so much a part of our lives that I, I wouldn't not have them. I think plants are really powerful medicine and they should be respected as such. But I also think it's part of eating from place and being healed from place. Like, your medicines might look different than my medicines. And I think it's It's part of that relationship we have with our land. And I just, I feel very connected and grounded when I'm like, you know, foraging for these medicines, using these medicines, using them in our bodies. And sometimes they just, you know, we don't know anything really. We know nothing, like tidbits of tidbits, you know, and like things that may, common, you know, we may take some of these medicines and suddenly like something else feels better. It's like, whoa, I didn't even think that would help that. And so there's, is, there's a holistic sort of— not holistic as in like, you know, holistic TM, but I mean really like more of an all-encompassing way of approaching our land and our health. When I involve plant medicines over, um, over— well, I don't know what I would use other than that because I don't want to take drugs. So I find them to be a really strong ally in like what we're doing.

Yeah, if anything, it comes down to that. Like, okay, I'm gonna take a plant or I'm gonna go take drugs, and God knows, or a synthetic, you know.

That's what I told him because we were— because we were talking about this when it came up that he needed some extra support, and I was like, well, are you really gonna like take a synthetic of this, or are we just gonna use plants? Because, you know, being— I think, you know, when you become a mom is when you get into this.

Yeah.

At least that's what happened for me, you know. Like, I had my first kid and all of a sudden I'm like, oh, like, you have an ear infection? Okay, well, I don't want to give you antibiotics. How are we going to treat this, you know? And, and you just— that's where it started for me, you know, 14 years ago when we had our first kid. I was like, oh, what's this? You know, I have to do something. And like you, you know, like herbs, homeopathy, essential oils, you know, like we use the gamut of it all. And, um, so yeah, I mean, it's been like that for me convincing him with this. Now he's like, wait, I'm gonna take plants? Am I supposed to take plants? I'm like, yes, you have to take this.

You said that your daughter— I guess you're talking about your daughter is now 29.

Yeah.

And, and she had had a vaccine when she was younger, is that right? Is that what you meant?

She had her first series when she was 3 months old. At that time, that's how it was, 3 months old.

Did you continue doing that with her and your children, vaccines? That was the end of it?

That was it. I thought, I thought she was gonna die, so she was admitted to the hospital. Yeah, yeah.

How did you know it was from that?

Well, um Well, she was vaccinated.

What I said, we believe mothers. Yeah, that other people don't.

And, uh, well, for her it was immediate, so it was the same day, so it was hard to deny. And, uh, she was a, you know, she was a 9-pound baby when she was born, big, you know, healthy baby. And, um, I had, um, we had just been posted to a new military base, so I had driven across Canada with her and, uh, went to the doctors that week. She got vaccinated. That night I brought her into the hospital. She was screaming this high-pitched scream that she had never made before, and everything in my body just stood up on end. Like, there was— and her temperature, so I don't know Fahrenheit, but it was like 39.9. She was going into the 40s. Um, anyway, it was very high. She started like, you know, shaking and convulsing. Anyway, so we went to the hospital. She was in the hospital for 2 days. Um, and, uh, I got into— almost got in a fistfight with a nurse. Um, It was an adventure. Anyway, I went home and, um, there was no internet back then. Did you look up the temperature?

It was 103, almost 104.

Yeah, so 3 months old, that's extremely high.

It was, and she had never been sick before. So I, um, anyway, I ended up calling because we had Yellow Pages back then. I went through them and found a bookstore in the nearest city to us, which was a few hours away, and I called them and said, do you have any books on vaccines? And they said, no, you got to call some hippie bookstore that I had to go to that was like full of incense and wind chimes. And so anyway, I drove down there, bought a couple books, and read these books, and they were actually pretty balanced. It wasn't like— but, um, well, one of them was And then I remember one of them was called A Shot in the Dark, and I don't remember what the other one was called. And I read them and I was just like, whoa, you know, because— and then I was completely terrified because I thought if you don't vaccinate your kids, they're going to die on you. And I didn't know anyone else doing that. And I certainly didn't want to make the choice to do it. But then I would think about what happened with her. And I thought if she gets vaccinated again, she could die. And I really have to— I don't know what the doc, who the doctor was, but when I finally got— when she finally got released from the hospital, I stayed with her the whole time. But when she got released from the hospital, the pediatrician came in to me and he said, um, do not vaccinate this baby again. And it was just— yeah. And I was 22 years old, and if he hadn't said that to me, I mean, it would be different today, who I am today. But then I first, I thought he was a lunatic, but he's the whole reason I went and got the books, and he's the whole reason that I had some level of confidence. I would think, well, he wouldn't tell me that if she was going to die, like he, you know, so I really drew on having an authority give me that permission to not do that. And so, yeah, so none of our children have been vaccinated since that first set she received.

Was that the beginning of your health journey?

Yes. Yeah.

Really? That moment?

Wow.

And it started with, okay, we're not going to vaccinate everybody. This is going back to— maybe we can speak to some— to this theme that I'm seeing in you is this ability to take action, address fear, and be brave. And you're afraid that, uh, because everybody's vaccinated, you don't have the internet. I mean, we can go and, and, and find a support group and find a lot of information if that's what the path we want to choose. But back then, because that would have been like '90s, right?

'80s at the— '93.

Okay, so that was like early '90s when the internet just wasn't— the information just wasn't out there like it is today.

I didn't have a computer.

So speak to us about having confidence in yourself and, and ideas that maybe this isn't right, even though there's no information out there. Maybe you can go a little more into that, because I feel like that, that happens with people when people diverge, is a lot of times they are absolutely alone. And there's something about you that keeps exploring. Do you know what that is?

It's not confidence. It's more a sense of wanting to align myself with a gut feeling of what's right. Always. That's stayed with me. There's— I have this sense of there's a rightness to the world, and I want to get as close to it as I can. And if that means I feel uncomfortable, or I have to go to battle, or I have to— people have to not like me, Well, that's okay. I, I don't like it. I don't like it. I'm a very— I'm not a confrontational person, but I will be if it means getting closer to what I value, um, and feel is right. I think that's really what it comes down to.

Do you always know what you value and what you feel is right? Yeah, you always know that. Is that, is that changing? What you think is right today, is— was it right also 5 years ago?

Yeah.

Nice.

So do you have confidence now though? Like, because I just— in my experience, like, when, when, like, he had cellulitis in his foot, and I have a, I have a good girl, I have a girlfriend who, like, when I get into, like, high-stress situations, I forget things. So I'm texting my girlfriend and I'm saying, what do I do? Like, I know that I have all the stuff that I need to do. I don't know what to use though. So she's texting me back, okay, let's, let's come up with a plan. So she helped me come up with a plan and that calmed me enough where I was able to like add to it and do better. So, but that gave me confidence because We, you know, at urgent care when he went, he thought he'd broken his foot because he had pain. So we went to urgent care to get an X-ray, and, um, they were like, you have to take the antibiotics, you have to take the antibiotics. And I was like, I don't, you know, I don't want to do that. And so it— once I went through the experience and we healed his foot without antibiotics, I feel more confident now than I did before. So has the confidence come for you Um, or because you're saying it's not confidence that you have, it's that you're aligning. But like, do you now have confidence that you didn't have when you were 22 because you've seen it work?

Absolutely. Uh, totally. And, and that's why I think like this idea that you have confidence and then you do something is just a load of BS. You do something and you gain confidence. And like Absolutely. And the other, the, you know, I think confidence comes too because, um, the things that I value and are important to me are crystal clear to me. And so if I'm going to do this, you know, action A, if I'm going to do this thing and it threatens like these things over here, or it might, you know, it might bruise my ego when I fail, or it might do all, you know, whatever the things that kind of hold people back. I don't even care because it's bringing me closer to the things that I do value. So I'm quite clear on like my values and my morals and like my guiding principles in life. And all the other stuff is kind of like fodder, you know? Okay, yeah, I might get, you know, these— I might get some flak from here, or I might look like a bit of a fool to these people, or I might not say it quite right and get these people mad. Like, It's, it's whatever. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. Nobody likes that part of it, but then that's where the confidence kicks in because I know that I'm still closer to where I want to be. So yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that, I think that, um, the, the confidence part now is authentic. Um, when I was in my 20s, uh, oh God, who's confident in their 20s? Like, you're really something special if you are.

I feel like a lot of people confident in their 20s, and then they like get into their 40s.

In the wrong direction, they're confident.

I thought I knew stuff and I didn't know anything. Like, you know, you're saying we just know snippets here and there. The older I get, the more I know I don't know, you know? And it's like crazy. Um, like we have a 14-year-old now. I mean, you've been through this with your, with your girls, you know, you having a teenager and kind of like seeing that. And I'm like looking at Justin, I'm like, we thought we were so smart, didn't we? We got together when we were young. So we, we were, we were teenagers, and we thought we knew so much.

And what are the, what are the big values and morals that, that you're speaking of? What are some of the big ones that guide you?

Um, so Nature guides me a lot. Nature's principles, laws, tenets. I try and be humble and have humility around that, even when it's uncomfortable for me. So I am like, around here, we're always trying to align ourselves as well and as closely as possible. Of course, it's never going to be like perfect, but we try and guide ourselves in that direction. So that helps us make a lot of decisions around here. My marriage or family is like the supreme crème de la crème. It's the very top. It's my whole heart focus. And so if my marriage and my family is that important, that means that I can be less important. And so I always try and move beyond myself and sort of that easy self-centered way of thinking and going beyond that and being an expression of love and acceptance. And, you know, for me, it's— I want to not just like love, but I want to be love. I want to actually be love for my family. I want to have a home where we can talk about things and where there's like honesty and humility and where we share that with our, our family as a whole. And then so like, I guess it's just there's different parts, right? Like if we're talking about the farm or we're talking about like who I am as a woman or as a wife or as a mother, it's sort of just this sense that we're— I have this— I always feel like there's a peace in me when I think of how small and insignificant I am. And I don't mean that in like, insecure, I'm so insignificant, but I just mean we have such a finite little drip in time in this life. And we're here to do good and to love, you know, and that there's that I can focus on that and realize I'm really not all that important. And the fact that I even got a shot at this thing called life is really a miracle. And so I try and always hold that And when things get crappy and, you know, we're stuck in our own selves and all that sort of thing, I try and bring myself back to that place. But, you know, that also, you know, is part of the guiding principle of how we farm as well. Like my absolute insistence on like harvesting our own animals. And if I couldn't do that, I don't know that I'd be farming, to be quite frank. I'd probably just be a hunter. So, um, though, um, and that's not because, you know, as you guys know very well, like, it's not a bloodlust, and it's certainly not that I have some fortitude that the next person doesn't. It's back to what is the right thing to do. And if I can't go beyond my discomfort, my sadness, my feelings to do the right thing, well then who am I? Then I cannot have confidence in myself at all. There's— I, I would— it— I mean, that's where confidence comes from, right, is doing all those hard things, stretching beyond that.

Yeah, it's not about— you said a good word there— what's it— it's not about bloodlust, you know. Even doing the right thing doesn't always feel good. Yeah, that doesn't mean it's wrong. And it's good that you have this overall morals and bigger compass to guide you through these little, uh, oh, I could never do that. No, no, you have a bigger vision that allows you to do that and step through that pain. I appreciate that. What that day— this might be— you probably won't remember, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. You'll see where I'm going with this. The day this happened with the vaccine, do you remember what you ate that day. You're probably not gonna remember what you ate that day, so get— if you do, that's great. But if you don't, what would you have been eating? What would you imagine you would have been eating that day back then?

Yeah. Oh, well, my mom raised us 1970s hippie food, like wheat germ cookies, like, like Like, we— but she, she cooked everything from scratch. So I never had cereal. I never had, you know, she'd make bran muffins, but they were from scratch. She would make them in the morning. Like, so it wasn't like— I sure couldn't get away with that food now. So at that time, honestly, I was probably— I drank a lot of milk, pasteurized milk, but nothing— there was no organic anything at that time that— well, I'm sure there was, but not, you know, in up northern Ontario. Um, and I ate, you know, grocery store meat and vegetables and rice and pasta and just normal stuff. But it was— I never, uh, we never ate junk food or stuff like that. I mean, yeah.

So you were eating whole foods, it sounds like, at least. And but, but this, this vaccine issue ended up launching you into this health journey. So how did you go from eating what everybody else would say is probably a really good diet. How did you go from that to, um, this next launching pad into a more intense health diet?

Well, um, it started with being the middle of winter, Northern Ontario, and a friend of mine handed me this book on how to do vegan food combining and gain the most brilliant, wonderful health imaginable. And so I thought, yeah, that's for me.

So, oh my God, Tara the hippie coming out.

That's hilarious. It was called Fit for Life. Do you guys— did you ever hear of that?

I think we did. Was that—

let me look this up.

No, wait a second.

It's Fit for Life. It was by— their last name was Diamond.

It was a husband and wife. Okay, now the Fit for Life I know about is not— oh, maybe it is. Okay, yeah, it's not what I was thinking of. What's the one I got a hold of?

Similar, but is it not this one?

I'm looking up Fit for Life.

Yeah, we found it right here. A New Beginning: The Ultimate Diet and Health Plan.

Okay, so tell us about it. Tell us, are you still fit for life? So how long do you do this?

Um, I didn't quite last a year. I'd say pretty close to a year. So, you know, it's -40 Celsius and Tara's eating her fruit breakfast of like mango and pineapple because in Ontario, northern Ontario, winter too. So it's, you can't combine— it's food combining, right? So you can't combine a starch with a protein. Even though all vegan foods are really starches, even their protein doesn't really— but doesn't compute. So I started doing that and, um, oh, I have pictures of myself at that time and I'm literally, I look like I have an eating disorder. Like I am literally a waif and that's just not my body type at all. There was just, you know, to be 23 and have like no muscle on you and stuff. But anyways, what happened was I started getting bladder infections. I started getting sick all the time. And I was— I had not had these issues before. I'd never had a bladder infection in my life. I started and I started going to the doctor and I was like, I have, you know, and then our daughter who was at this time, I guess she was not— she would, she would have been like around 9 months. So I was still nursing her at that time. But she started getting rosacea on her cheeks. And no one ever said, like, you know, I mean, I guess the doctor didn't know I was eating Fit for Life or anything, but she started getting little weird things that she hadn't had before. She was getting stomach issues. And, um, one day I went into the, the town that was near us, and, uh, it was a little health food store, um, and it was— there was a German guy that owned it and him and I just started talking. His family owned this German bakery next door that had like all sourdough spelt breads and traditional sort of baking. And anyway, his name was Harry. And I said, you know, I keep getting these bladder infections. Do you have some like herbs or something for that? And he said, what are you eating? And I'm like, oh, super good pineapple and like lentils. And anyway, so he, he was like, oh no, no, no, no, no. And he actually wrote out a food plan for me. We were really poor at the time. Thank goodness. He just said, I'm just— he sat with me for about an hour and he wrote down like, you know, like I remember the breakfast was a couple of eggs with some of the sourdough organic spelt bread that his parents made with butter on it. And some sausage or bacon. Like, it was just sort of— and I remember being absolutely horrified and thinking this guy was nuts. He was like from the Stone Age. Nobody ate that way anymore. And I kind of tucked it away. But then, you know, a couple weeks later or whatever it was, it wasn't a long time after that, I just, um, continued to not do well. And so I started to wonder if maybe this was— I was cold all the time. I think that was like the biggest issue is how cold I was. So, um, yeah, so I started eating like that. And then once I started eating that way, all those issues went away. Um, and then I was, you know, he was saying, you got to get your chicken from this farm over here, and you got to get, you know. And so that's what started like everything, going to farms, sourcing our food. And then that led to finding raw milk, which is illegal everywhere in Canada. And still is. And so yeah, it was just sort of like an evolution. I feel a little bit better, I'm gonna maybe try this, and I feel a little bit better. And does it really make sense for me to be eating this in Canada at this time of year? And yeah, I just— that's how it went from there.

Were you horrified? You used the word horrified. Was that at all because moral issues. It sounds like maybe it wasn't, and maybe it was— you were on this path of health, not— it wasn't necessarily a moral issue for you yet, was it?

Not really, no. No, it was more just I thought this was sort of the evolved way of eating.

Yeah, you'd read the book, you'd been indoctrinated with the, uh, Fit for Life.

Exactly.

Don't eat eggs, and then this man is saying eat eggs, and you're like Yeah, what a dinosaur. All right, and I'm guessing this, the, like, the way he was having you eat was like Weston A. Price type, you know, with the sourdough, the fermented grains.

It just seemed old-fashioned to you is what it's coming off to me as, or, or maybe bad for you because it's butter. Like, maybe you were falling into that. Were you falling into that, like, a butter is bad for you, eggs, like the cholesterol, this type of thing?

Oh, well, that was part of their shtick, like, was, yeah, all animal fats will give you a heart attack. I had eaten them up until that year. Like, you know, my mom always was an avid butter fan. Even when everyone switched to margarine, she would be horrified that they— so, you know, thank goodness for that, at least.

But, um, yeah, I pulled up a picture of— I pulled up Google Images of Harvey Dime. Pictures, he actually looks great, and some pictures looks like— I don't know, like, he might be on a vegan diet.

I wonder if he's still vegan.

That's— oh yeah, we should find that out too. I know there's two pictures. One, he's quite handsome, and the other one, he's like—

it's an obituary.

I don't know if you can— while you're on this show, but yeah, that one, that looks bad.

See if this is him.

Um, so, uh, we should just Google— just Google and ask if he's still a vegan.

I know the two of them had a bad divorce. I remember that. Okay, they went their separate ways.

So can people, um— is this for everybody? Is this for everybody, animal-based? I guess that's where I was going with Harvey. What if he looked great? I mean, one of these pictures he looks great, one of these looks terrible. Uh, so can somebody thrive for 50 years on the Fit for Life? Can it be— can somebody be fit for life? That protocol?

Well, I don't know. I couldn't, I couldn't be fit for a year. It didn't happen.

So I mean, I do feel like—

do you think it's bio-individual, or do you think everybody should be eating a little more animal-based?

Oh, um, well, I think how— I think everyone should have animal foods in their diet for sure because there's just nutrients you can't get. But how much and, you know, the, the quantities and the— I think that could be bio-individual for sure. Yeah.

All right, all right, let's take a turn here. Uh, tell us about Canada. So all we see from Canada is what we see on the news, which is just scrolling on Instagram. So that means we're seeing about the trucker convoys, stuff like that.

I follow news organizations on Instagram.

You do?

I actually do give news.

Which ones?

Um, Newsmax.

Babylon Bee. Babylon Bee doesn't count, Rebecca.

Not the Bee.

I follow not the Bee.

Like Newsmax, and there's one that's like No BS News. Um, I think I might follow the Epoch Times on Instagram.

So it's a hair conservative, our news perspective. I imagine if somebody was listening, if somebody was consuming conservative mainstream—

I don't follow me—

maybe they're gonna see CNN or ABC. So Tara, you're on the ground, you're in Canada. What's Canada like right now?

I can't leave. Save me! I can't get out of here.

No, I can't leave. Out of your house or out of Canada?

Not the house yet. That's on its way. No, I'm— we can't leave Canada.

Yeah, you could not come see us in North Carolina if you wanted to.

We're the only country in the world that they stopped exiting. Like, you think if they didn't like you not getting their injection that they would want you to go and then not let you back in, but no, we can't go anywhere.

So Can you go to the— can you go to the grocery? Are you vaccinated? I'm guessing not because—

no.

Okay, can you go to the grocery store?

Yes. Okay, okay, but that's changing on the 21st.

What?

They won't let you go to the grocery store after the 21st? No.

Oh, sorry, they're letting us take our masks off on the 21st.

Okay, so that's getting better then.

So you guys still have mask mandates?

Yeah.

Okay.

Wow.

So do you wear the mask?

Uh, if I didn't wear the mask, I would be physically removed from the grocery store. I've tried it. But you know what? Here's something interesting. My husband goes into places and he's a big burly dude with a big burly beard. Everyone pretends they don't notice he doesn't have a mask on.

I gotta tell you this, Tara. Early on in the pandemic, this is how you go into a store without a mask on. We saw a dude in Lowe's, barefoot, gnarly beard, and pistol on his side. Ain't nobody gonna go tell—

nobody said anything.

You can do that in America. You can, you can. So he was doing nothing illegal.

He was doing nothing. I mean, No shoes. I mean, I don't know what Lowe's policy on shoes— he had no shoes on.

He had every right.

Nobody said anything to him at all. It was hilarious.

No, nobody's going to tell you.

You're like, whoa, this guy's—

that's funny how your husband can get away with it.

That's a different world.

Okay, so you don't— well, you said you're, you're thinking it's going to get tighter even though they are loosening up on the mask mandates. You think it's going to get worse?

You know, I— well, we kind of look at things from a global perspective instead of just— I think there's a lot more going on here than the pandemic. I think our right to food is being chipped away, and I could tell you some of the farming stuff that's going on here that's got me really worried. But I think that we're probably seeing— you know, there's a really great book actually recommend, it's called Nudge, and the governments of the world actually have decided to use this as a— there's some— you can, if you look up the book Nudging Governments, you'll see that they're sort of employing this tactic. And it's the idea of you just kind of give a little push and then let someone come back and give a little push. And we're sort of moving along on this trajectory. And so, you know, yes, it's great. We're going to be able to take our masks off. Last week, our daughter and Troy and I went into a pool hall, and that was the first time in 2 years I've been out in public. I've been allowed to go into a place. Um, yeah, and it was weird, and it worried me how much my brain had changed. Like, I was kind of like looking around and like, you know, I was like, this is weird. Like, I'm around these people, and I was thinking, holy smokes, like, it's crazy how quickly our brains adapt to abnormal situations and normalize them. Um, but I felt that the first time we were around people without masks.

I remember being like kind of afraid and being like, oh no, is this okay? And like all these things. And I had to be like, Rebecca, like you used to do this on the regular and it's okay. Like there's— you're gonna be okay. But yeah, it's true, like your brain really does like It does.

There's a sense of pressure of what it seems like everybody else is doing.

Yeah, like you don't want to rock the boat.

Like when she's saying, is this okay, she's not just talking about— I don't even think you're talking about the health aspect of it. I think you're talking about the—

well, like, is it going to be a super spreader event? You know, like, is it going to— you know, like, are we going to be stigmatized and Mm-hmm. It's just sad because we used to gather with people all the time, and now it's like you second-guess it because there's virtue signaling, there's all these things, you know. And I— you just have to, like, you just comes back to, like, what are your values and what is your core, and you have to just go with that. And I feel like here— I feel like here where we are is almost completely back to normal, um, in a sense of, of it. It almost seems as though it's disappeared. Maybe it hasn't, but here it feels that way when I go out.

Yeah.

Let's talk about— let's talk about the hippie store. And you might have some insight on this, but, uh, you had to go to the hippie store to seek out these— this herbal thing. There was no internet.

The book.

This book. Remember that? Remember how you had to go— you're starting to explore herbals and stuff, so you went to the hippie store. I don't know if it's like this in Canada, but if you go to the hippie stores now, the Whole Foods, the, the health food stores, they're the, they're the strictest on this. They're, they're like, they were the first to jump on the the government mandates. And so they're like, you can't come in mainstream now. Have you ever noticed that? Have you noticed that? Is that— what's that? Is it happening like that in Canada?

Um, totally. It's, it's interesting you say that because I was just thinking about this the other day. There used to be, um, this magazine that you— when you would go to the health food store— like, the health food stores were the rogue rebel type places that you go, right? And there used to be this magazine they'd give you for free, and it was just full of, um, you know, anti-vaccine literature. It was full of like, um, different ways of eating that were completely contrary to mainstream. It was talking about different health therapies. And that same magazine has been bought and sold a few times, but the publishers now, it's just like, you know, it's exactly what you're talking about. It's like, you know, all about like how to keep your neighbor safe by getting vaccinated and putting on masks and like, you know, this fake sort of like health by going meatless once a day and like that whole sort of nonsense. And I think that's definitely been lost. I think that these places now are probably some of the most radical left-leaning type institutions, like, following this health advice. And I think that the pandemic made everything all the more worse as far as that goes too, because there's— especially in Canada, I think you Americans, you guys have— I know, like, I have, you know, quite a few American friends, and I know it's different everywhere. I have friends that are in Portland, and I have friends in Montana, and like, so it's, it's like almost different worlds depending on what is encompassing your bubble, but there's a spirit of, and maybe it's a 50/50 mix now because I know you've got, you know, radical left-wing people just like we do, but you still have a mix. And I think Canada is losing that. I think that balance is really swung to the other side, and we're just seeing some incredible radical, radical policies that are being put into place right now. And, um, yeah, it's scary. Like, during the truckers convoy, there was such a sense of, whoa, here's my country. Like, these are the people I remember. Like, we still exist. And then before that, it was just like, I— it's hard to identify what we even are as a nation anymore.

So Um, yeah, I was into that. Do you think, uh, most of the people are for all this, or, or is there something different going on? So are most of the people like, yeah, yeah, let's tighten up the rules, let's, let's get, let's have more government control? What do you think they're on? It's trucker convoy.

I, I think the majority of Canadians probably are for restrictions. I think the people that are against it are a lot more than, you know, we would know. But the other problem is we don't have a real robust, um, alternative news source in Canada. It's all like our government, I think, gave them a few hundred million dollars last year, all of our major news agencies, to keep them afloat because they should be really just collapsing. And so, um, it's really just really strong propaganda is what we get. So it's really hard to know. Like, all I know is the people I talk to, you know, the people that are around me. And, and, um, everyone thinks this is nuts that, that are around me, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm in the center of Toronto stopping people on the corner asking what they think about it. So Um, I think there's really become more of a rural-urban divide, and I think this pandemic has really, you know, amplified that.

Yeah, Rebecca said, oh, it feels like it's going back to normal. Yeah, I mean, because we're out— we're rural, we almost get shocked when we go back to the town. Even now though, it is trickling back. That's why I brought up the hippie stores, because you can go to Lowe's. We went to a I was— I spoke at a farm machinery show and there were like tens of thousands of people and we saw maybe one or two masks. Yeah, but you go to the hippie store, well, no, you go to Whole Foods and everybody's wearing one.

I went into Whole Foods the other day and many of the employees were unmasked, which I know, you know, like a lot of companies have mandated it for their employees and they're not asking their— the patrons to participate if they don't want to, you know. But I went to Whole Foods and I was shocked to see many of the employees— I would say half of them did not have masks on. Whole Foods has given a choice to people at this point, which I was like, wow, you know. Um, that's why I was like, wow, like, this is, this is different than it's been, you know. But again, like, we do run in a different circle than, like, we're in a rural most of our people are that we communicate with on an almost daily basis are more rural, as opposed to an urban, like, you know, we don't go into town very often.

I think I bring this up, not that you or I even have an answer to it. But maybe to be sad together. It's okay to be sad. You know, Asheville, North Carolina, used to pride itself in in Keep Asheville Weird. That, that was the slogan, you know. You go to Asheville and it's all this diversity. It was very different. And, uh, you know, incredible diversity and just such an interesting and fun town. That's all gone. It's like there's no diversity. You comply or you're out. There's no, uh, there's none of that.

So there's no other—

I think it's sad.

You can't have a different thought process, it seems like. It's like you have to have this this one thought, and if you don't, then you're not welcome. And it's just— it was really sad when it happened, when we, you know, we used to gravitate towards that more diverse and, and fun thinking.

Yeah, I don't want to say fun thinking, but different thinking. You know, it's called Beer City. Like, they have the most bars per capita in America in Asheville. They call it the San Francisco of the East.

But, but then like now we find ourselves kind of like gravitating more towards the small town that's also Hendersonville, you know, like we're in the middle between this like smaller town and then this more urban city. And so now we find ourselves gravitating more towards the small town and that kind of thinking. And, and it's, it just, it almost feels more diverse there. These all can have different opinions. It's okay.

They didn't buy into it. They're like they're tough. They're like, they're like a whole different breed and generation we came to appreciate. Um, okay, so how, how— well, it, you know, so now you, you can't— oh, what happened to the trucker convoy? We're— I'm speaking to you on March 15th. I don't know when people will hear this, but Is that— has that fizzled out or is that still going?

Oh no, that's— they brought the cops in and that was the end of that. So they, they came in quite aggressively and physically shut everything down. Oh baby.

So they never got a voice?

Yeah, well, they, they— I think like we went 3 times and it was, it was incredibly powerful. There was So many people. It was one of the most positive things I've ever been involved with, actually. It was. And I— so I think it was— look, I'm being sidetracked. I, I think it was just like— so I think that the momentum was there and I think that it brought a lot of people together that didn't— you know, we all thought we were alone, really. So it still achieved things. And, you know, how they handled it with, like, you know, closing people's bank accounts. And I think they've really shown their cards and shown where they're trying to steer the ship that we're all on. And, um, I think it woke a lot of people up, actually. So I, I think it was a— I still think it was a very positive movement.

Yeah, I see that. Um, How is it— how does it feel to go— be going into this and you're feeling like things might be restricted, like maybe there's going to be a day you're not going to be able to the grocery store? How does it feel to be growing your own food there on your farm?

Um, I mean, I'm very grateful that we are able to do this, that we worked as hard as we did. I mean, the reason we ended up getting our own farm back in the day— I mean, we were buying from farmers for years and years, but everyone was talking about peak oil back then in the '80s, you know, it was like everything was like peak oil. And so we were like, you know, we were getting set up mentally for what we were going to be doing. But, um, so I'm, I mean, I'm very grateful that we're doing this. I'm, I do have worries about sort of our ability to do it. I, with just keeping an eye on sort of global events and the messaging that we're receiving, and, um, you know, this whole thing like Canada's going full head with carbon taxing, and I think that's that's just going to be a matter of time before that hits animals and like farming animals. And so I just think that there's, um, we're, we're still trying, we're always trying to kind of keep a, uh, and I, you know, just have our finger on the pulse of the direction that we're going so we can try and make sure that we have security built around us without letting it immobilize us with like fear and like feeling like, well, what's the point of doing anything if they're going to do this? I don't have that sense, but it's a fine line between motivation and feeling a little fatigued by seeing where we're headed.

So now you guys used to— is that when you were market farming? Because you were doing a market farm, weren't you?

We sold grass-fed beef and pork and stuff. Yeah, right.

And then that's when you decided to slow down and you just went to like homestead level, basically.

We actually sold our old farm.

Hold on, sorry, somebody's saving us from the utility man.

I know, the utility man is here.

Hey Teddy, it's okay, he's not gonna hurt us. Betty.

Very vicious guard dog.

Come back. You're back with us.

This is Henry. He's a year old.

Hi, Henry.

Hi. Hi.

I love that name, Henry. Hi, Henry.

Hi, Daddy. Daddy, it's okay. We're gonna let the truck go.

Daddy, did you say that? Will you, will you take the baby and see if he'll— you might just want to play on the floor. Do you want to go back outside or do you want to stay inside with Brother?

Outside or inside? Oh, he's going to Brother. That's good.

You might just let him play in the grass.

Yeah, he'd like that.

Do you guys have ticks there?

Oh yeah, I got— I picked one off of me a couple weeks ago, which is strange.

I know, it's February. He had a tick on him at the end of February. We were like, what in the world? I think it was a baby dog tick though.

We're quite a bit warmer than you.

We are, because like, as you can see, we have a ton of plants. I mean, I've got stuff growing.

She's still too early. She's the crazy plant lady.

I am.

I can't do nothing about it.

Last year when I bought the plant starts from this greenhouse, they were this big when they came. So I thought in my mind, well, if that's how big they're going to be, I should probably get them in March so that I can grow them up so that they're like this big when I plant them in the ground. But they came in, they came this thick now.

Oh wow.

Oh, okay, we're at a different level.

Okay, it's 13, it's 13 degrees Celsius right now where we are. How cold is it where you are?

It's a hot day today. It is hot.

Where you are?

Westport, Ontario.

Okay, so I think we're almost done. I want to, uh, dig in on this a little bit more where you You, you, you sound like maybe you were starting to grow food.

This is the warmest day so far, and we're at 13 Celsius.

So, um, hold on, wait, what is that? Celsius, 55 Fahrenheit.

Where do you see it in Fahrenheit?

Click right there.

Okay, I'm a mom, I don't know how to do internet 201. I used to know how to do the internet because the internet came out when we were in college. And so we like knew what we were doing, and then we got to sleep through the night, and then I have kids and I don't know what— how to do anything anymore.

Um, okay, so it sounds like you got into food a little bit for some preparation, some of this for some front— for some peak oil. But it's interesting how now we're at peak oil. I've never seen it so expensive in my life. Have you? Fuel? Fuel is, uh, diesel was $5.50 the other day here, $4.50. Guess how much is your fuel price?

You guys have nothing on us. You have nothing on Canada because you go by liter too, right? Oh yeah, so 4 liters in a gallon. Okay, okay. But then you got to do the— get— then you got to do the US dollar to Canada exchange on top of that because you're, you're more expensive in general. Yeah.

How much are you paying?

How much are you paying per liter?

Uh, somewhere around— I think we're at like a buck, almost just under $2 a liter. So that's 2— that's about $8 a gallon, right? But then we've got to pay— what's the dollar at? About $1.30 a Canadian. I have to pay $1.30 to get $1 American, I think.

Dollars— I'll do a Google real quick. $8 US dollars to Canadian, right there. Oh, there, somebody's already looked this up. Wow, you're double almost 60% more.

Wow, your country sucks you dry, I'm telling you.

Hold on a second, we need to—

so are you, so are you Canadian in your heart and soul?

Um, well, I don't know, I was born here.

I—

we're like, we're wondering if we're going to be able to stay here, to be honest.

I'm going— are you, are you, are you— yeah, so Are you—

where would you go?

And would it break your heart because you're a Canadian in your roots, you know what I'm saying? Like, or not, maybe you're not attached. Rebecca's not attached. She could go totally move anywhere if you were.

Justin says that he was to be transplanted.

I can't even move out of the county from our—

from our— from our land, like literally this land. So Justin, this is family land. Our children are fourth generation hand milkers here, so it's like It would— like he says, if I was— if I have to move and you transplanted my roots to another county close to us, he feels like his soul may die. It's like, that's what he told me recently. And I was like, well, then we can't ever move.

You're laughing, so maybe that tells me maybe you don't identify with that. So maybe you're not.

No, well, I actually— I do identify with that because that was my husband on our first farm. Oh wow. He was like, no way am I moving. Yeah, but he's okay. Is he okay? He's okay.

He wilted though. His soul wilted a little bit, right?

No, he thanks me every day.

Oh, Justin, I—

because I'm like, because Tara We have a—

there's one property behind us on this dead-end road.

Yeah.

And they are finally putting it up for sale, but it's, it's 350 acres.

We don't know if we can afford it.

We put an offer and that's like $3.5 million, um, and it's probably going to be low. They're probably going to want more than that.

We think— we're not sure what—

so the problem is we have a public road going right— it's a dead end right through our property.

There's a public road right here, 50 feet away, right outside my door.

And so far we've had fans come, and you know, we don't like unannounced visitors. Yeah, so far they've been friendly and, and safe, and we say, I'm sorry, we don't take visitors, and see you later.

They leave.

Um, you know, maybe one day it's gonna be a hater, I don't know. Um, but, but what if somebody else buys that and they develop it? There's certain rules. They can only build a house an acre because we have the right-of-way to the place. They have to actually cross our land.

It would ruin our way of life here if there was a development.

So I need to hear this about your husband because we think, you know, do we— I'm so attached. I want that. I want to fight for it. See if I can't get it. I'm willing to get a legacy property for our children. There's two wonderful springs on there. I can't— there's a waterfall, so there's like—

we could grow grass-fed beef and lamb.

On the other hand, we could sell, have equity, and go buy $200, 200 acres in a county further out of town. So your husband thanks you. Why does he thank you every day?

Because it's, um, it was the right thing to do, even though it seemed insurmountable at the time.

It feels insurmountable.

What was so Holy crap.

Well, my goodness, imagine moving a farm. It's horrible.

All right, why is that? Why he didn't want to do it then? He wasn't attached?

Oh, because we had put 6 years of blood and toil and sweat and tears into that place, and he said, how could we just walk away from that? I feel everything.

I do feel that. So like, we've been here 20 years. Yeah, we have the, the pastures are amazing. Like, we have improved this place so much, and that does, that does pull at my heartstrings. Although I am like, if we buy something, we can make it just as good as we did here.

We've done it. We've done it, probably, because we've done it before.

We've did—

I feel confident in that. But I do feel like this is my home. I've— I grew up moving around. And so that's one reason I feel like I can say goodbye to this place. But I always did say when I was a kid, I don't want to move my kids around. Like, my parents, they didn't have a choice, you know.

Like, we went on the Great American Farm Tour. We traveled all 50 states in 2017, uh, and it nearly killed me. Uh, and Canada. We went to Canada.

We did.

We stand west.

We went, we went and into Ontario.

We saw JM Fortier on the East Coast and we saw Curtis Stone on the West Coast. Beautiful country. And, um, where was I going with that?

Oh, the kids.

Oh yeah, we told the kids we were going to sell the place and they cried. Really what we were doing is looking for our place in America. If you grew up in a religion— did you grow up in a religion or anything like that?

Yeah, we were Christian.

Okay, so you have to at some point decide if you're going to be a Christian or not. Right? You have to own that for yourself. So it's kind of like that. I had to decide, am I going to own this land?

Does he want to?

I had to actually have to make, you know, I had to buy it from the estate. It's not like I'm inheriting this. Yeah, I did have a monetary decision to make there too. Am I going to commit to this land and make it mine? Or are we going to sell what we do own of it and go to Tennessee where the land's cheaper or something?

But also though, the thing is, is that because this, you know, like when we got— we were 16 when we started dating, we got engaged when we were 20.

We—

Justin always wanted to live here and raise his children here. And it's kind of like, did you want to do that because this was in— this was like part of your family land, or is it because it was easy? We didn't have to go out and search and get a mortgage and all these things. It was, it was, it was, it was very easy. This fell I don't want to say it fell into our lap because we did have to work for it, and we've had to fight for it some. Um, not in a nasty way, but just like fight for it, like put money where our mouth was. Oh my goodness, there's a bug flying around with something attached to it. No, it's a giant.

Can I kill it?

He won't let me kill the wasp.

I'm for letting the wasp go. He protects your— that he protects your precious Vegetables. All right.

Um, anyways, we, we had to make that decision.

So you finally talked him into it. How'd you— how'd you talk him into it, or did he come around?

You know how I talked him into it? I found the farm and I said, we're going to look at a farm tomorrow morning.

Okay.

And yeah, because that's what I wanted to do, but I was like, we should go look at this land.

And we went to this place we came here and we were just like, whoa. Um, and before that, I had been— we had been having conversations around like, what do we want for our lives? Like, what, what we— like, our first farm was like over 200 acres. We were doing grass-fed beef. We had put up all the fencing. We were doing rotational grazing. We had, uh, we were breeding large black pigs. You know, we, we had all that stuff on the go, and we would get in at like 11 o'clock at night. Like, we were literally killing ourselves, um, because we had to do everything— perimeter fencing, we were like bringing in cattle from out west to breed, like bulls from out west. Like, we were, we were in it. And, um, um, that's how we are. Like, I had a— I had 28 head of cattle on our farm before we were even on it. Like, before The day I got possession, they were delivered. And so that's just like, we were, we're crazy like that. But, um, and so yeah, you know, it just after about 5 years, it got to the point where we were looking around, um, we were struggling, like our marriage was really under a lot of stress, um, our— we weren't doing the fun things with the kids that we wanted to do anymore. Um, and so I just started planting little seeds, you know. I wonder if we did things a little slower, if we weren't doing this to bring in income but just homesteading for ourselves and maybe selling a few, you know, if we have extra heifers or produce or eggs, selling that, but not with the intention of making it pay us. Um, and so we started having those conversations, and then I was secretly looking at other farms. And I found this one, came and looked at it, and I— after we had looked at it, we went and walked the land, and they said there's two other people from Toronto that want to use it as a weekend country getaway. And they were putting bids on it the next day, so we literally had 8 hours to make up our mind.

Wow.

And how many—

is that where you— is this where you came up with the brand Slow Down Farmstead?

Yeah, because we're slowing down.

Okay, so this is good. This is your divergence, I think. This is— this is— you were telling another divergent story where they are going in, they've, they've gone into market farming, and so they've biggered. So this is, this is what I like about your story is that— well, I'm talking Dr. Susan's talk here. You, you, uh, you've— your, your divergence is scaling down. You know, you had the scare. I like your launching pad. Your launching pad was this, this health concern surrounding the vaccine. And then you, you're killing yourself on this market farm. And you're, you're actually, when most out there and watching are going to be wanting to bigger, you're, you're smalling, getting smaller, you're little. You're literally— so that's how many acres is it now?

Yeah, how many acres do you have?

100.

Okay. Do you think about— do you want your children to live on the 100 acres with you when they're adults?

Well, they are adults.

No, they are adults.

Yeah, they are, aren't they?

Yeah.

So he has different—

because you have girls.

So what's your thought process there with the children?

Well, Everything is— I don't know what's going to happen. Our oldest daughter is dating a guy in Virginia, and it looks like she's heading out to Virginia. He's actually a farm boy. So, um, and then our other daughter isn't sure that she's going to be able to work here. She's in her last couple months of acupuncture college for traditional Chinese medicine, and she just got word that she's not going to be able to get a license without a vaccine. Vaccine, so she may be forced to leave. So I mean, you know, you get to a point where it's like, well then why are we staying here? Like, if I— you know, not that I'm— I want to follow my kids all over the world, but, um, yeah, so we're in a real— I don't know.

How is she getting out? So is this only going to be temporary then? Hopefully she'll be able— she'll be able to— which one? That you said that you can't actually leave Canada.

Well, legally you can't leave. We'll figure it out.

We'll find a way.

She's gonna make a way.

Love will find a way.

We're tunneling under the US border.

Right.

Well, this is good. This is good talking to you. So you're at a different stage of life. This has given us perspective. I have these conversations with Rebecca, like, is getting this property gonna make us happy? We know it's not gonna make us happy. Actually, we know it's probably actually gonna be the opposite.

It's gonna make your life a lot more complicated.

It's gonna be it's gonna be a struggle. That doesn't mean it's not right. We've talked about in this podcast, just because it's scary or hard doesn't mean it's, it's wrong.

Uh, no, I think—

but just like, you bring a really good perspective.

There's a distinction there though, right? Like what you're talking about, that struggle, um, I think that can be both positive and a sign that you're on the wrong path. Like And so I think that's why you have to be really clear and have that, like, know what your fundamental core is. Years ago, years ago, we did a holistic management course. Have you guys ever done that?

Oh, no, no.

Holistic management, like animal management or personal management?

Like Allan Savory?

Yeah, the Allan Savory course. So anyways, it's, it's, it's, it's both. It's like farming, but it's like, what, what's the point of being a farm family if your farm family doesn't know what your ethos and what is your mission statement? Like, it's sort of, it's so it grinds down into like, what is the most important things to you? And you sort of write out this mission statement, which is like, if, you know, the most important thing is family and like, you know, the details of that are unique to everybody, of course, what their desire is, how they want to live, like those intimate details of what they want their life to feel like and be like, and, you know, achieving and, And if you have that as your core tenet, and then you're in a decision where like, you know, this great farm comes up, or this new project comes up, or this new like, you know, I want to bring these animals onto the farm, you can always go back to that center place and see and weigh it against what you've decided is, is yours and how you want to live, and is it going to align or not. But that has We don't like necessarily use that exact structure, but that's how we make these decisions now going forward. Like right now I've been like weighing if we used to have goats and I'm like, maybe I should bring goats back, but then I'm gonna need extra fencing. Then I'm gonna need like, we have really bad predator pressures. So then I'm gonna need an alpaca and then I'm gonna need like, you know, Sorry, I can't hear you anymore.

Oh no.

Now I can. Now I can. Yep. Okay.

So you open an alpaca instead of a dog. That's good.

I, yeah, I wouldn't do a dog because we live in a really hilly area and there's a lot of valleys around us. So a dog barking all night would, you know, it, because we have a lake right behind us, it echoes off the lake and I would have angry neighbors and it would keep me up all night long too. So Yeah, but I think like for us, our biggest thing right now is zero debt. I think especially in Canada is that if anything we're going to do is going to incur debt, it's right off the table. So we're like aggressively paying off our mortgage right now because I think that the way things are going and they're already talking in Canada about digital IDs and digital, these central currencies, I think we are going to be screwed if if we have any sort of debt that they can use as leverage to— they want people out of the rural areas and into the urban areas. So for us, anything that will incur debt is just, it's automatically off the table for us.

Yeah. And that, you know, we've gone back and forth on that too. You know, this would be, that would have to be debt. That would be the struggle. That would be the—

well, I mean, we have, we have some limits though on it. Like we know We have some ideas. We've put out the offer and we're— if they come back with and say a different number that we've already agreed to, like in our hearts, then, you know, that's a possibility. But then there's also owner financing and stuff like that. So like we have a lot of ideas.

Yeah, it sure makes it more simple. If you have— yeah, if you have rules like, if we have— I'm not going to go into debt, well then, uh, I need to earn $3.5 million within a year, which is not impossible. There's plenty of people that generate crazy amounts of income. I don't want to say it's impossible.

I know I say it's impossible either because I don't want to limit ourselves, but at the same time, it's crazy.

But there is something neat about having yourself some rules.

Yes.

And even though it hurts, even though, you know, oh well, we said we're not going to go into debt, but we— and when we told the kids and we explained the debt to the kids, they're not big fans.

They're like, no, we can't do that.

You know, I mean, they're scared. This is one of those situations, Tara, too, where it's, it's scary to move, it's scary to stay. You know, I don't, I don't know if we stay because we We have one of the things in our heart, I'm pretty sure, is that we want a legacy property for our children. Uh, so that means we're encouraging them to stick around. We want— I'm gonna, I'm gonna hire them, I'm gonna let them have their own entrepreneur venture on this, on this farm. Well, if they go, they go, they go, right? And if they, they have this land, that's fine too. Uh, you guys sell the land, you'll have that. Rebecca and I'll get an RV and we'll go support you however we can.

Yeah, but yeah, I mean, yeah, and we're telling our kids too, we're like, because we've been very honest about this all with them, and you know, like, we may have to sell our current place to get a different place so that we can have enough land for everybody. And we're like, we're trying to make decisions for your adult self, you know, like, we're not making decisions just for us because, like, I mean, we're in our 40s we want to give them something, you know. Like, that's our goal, is to give them something. If, you know, like, if the world is going in this direction that it seems that it may be, they're gonna need to be able to grow their own food. They're gonna need to be able to sustain themselves and their families. And so we want to, not out of fear, but out of love. And, you know, if they don't want it, they can sell it, you know. And, and do what they want with it as adults.

I'll bring this up. You had— we had mentioned faith. You had said you were Christian. The— then you may know, like, there's this Christian idea that you don't, you don't store up for yourself treasures on earth. You, you, you— it's this detachment kind of idea. Uh, not storing up for yourself treasures on earth, that'd be kind of a struggle, wouldn't it? And, and then I don't know if it's Buddhism or Zen or, or what that says, you know, talks about attachment, how that can be not so good. Uh, so I don't know where we are on that either. Uh, but there's that idea too, is that maybe sometimes somebody needs to be transplanted because— now I'm just getting the analogy— because they can't grow to full, full in that pot. They're gonna have to be transplanted, they're gonna have to have transplant damage. But then they're gonna have a chance to actually thrive and come to fruition. And there's a chance they could die. I mean, there's a chance the soul could die, but it's maybe worth it because you're never going to reach fruition. So there's that analogy to tell me about that.

Justin, I like that.

You want to say anything about that?

Um, well, I totally agree. I think for us, actually, we've, we've moved every 2 years our adult lives, right? Because husband was in the military for 25 years. So, uh, it's been— I think right now it's really hard to— exactly what you guys were saying, like, this— everything we've done is with the idea that we're going to be able to give our kids something that they are not going to be able to get on their own. I mean, they just aren't. They, they aren't going to be, especially with the way things are going now. And the rise in rural properties here is through the roof. So now it's like having moved so much, it's like we're actually in a place where we just want to be done and like plant roots. And I just want to spend my days getting to know this land more and, you know, just really being in place and belonging to place. And so I think that actually makes it harder for us, like right now, like this, these ideas of, you know, like I said, I have some American friends, the ones in Montana are like, there's no rules here, get your ass over here. Like, you know, this is— and it's cool.

Gorgeous too.

Oh my word, that'd be even warmer for you. It's like crazy.

I know, it would be so warm.

It'd be so cold for us, but you wouldn't have that. You'd feel like you're in Florida.

But it's, it's not that easy, you know. And I, I guess like my husband thinks like, look, this is a globalist movement. This isn't about countries, governments anymore. And so we're all on the same trajectory. It's just some of us, depending on what the structure of our countries were, like, how, you know, we're a socialist country basically, you know, so we were able to sort of speed up the process. And if that's the case, what are— where are any of us gonna go? Does it just make more sense to be where you are, live as simply as you can, to like be debt-free and concentrate on the things that you can be doing because there is still like what we were just talking about a few minutes ago is that element of surrender too, right? It's like doing what we can and then surrendering to some of the other stuff. And if we're constantly running, I have to kind of sit with that and say, what am I like, what am I running from? Like, like, they're gonna catch me. And, you know, it comes back to this idea of death too, you know, like, if, if it gets really like where I can't be raising my own food and I I'm limited to what I can do, or even like how I can participate in society because I don't want to get a digital ID or all these different things they're bringing in. Like, our province is bringing in digital IDs. They're bringing them in. It's on our provincial website, and all of our services are tied to that— our banking, our healthcare, everything else. So it's happening here in Canada. And so You know, I don't know. I don't know that I have any answers. It's just kind of what we've been thinking about. What— there's a certain level of peace you still have to have in your everyday, and if you lose yourself to all the what-ifs, it can be really immobilizing too. So, um, I don't know. It's a crazy time to— you want to know what's going on, but you also have to be able to concentrate and let that go and focus on the things that you can be doing.

Um, you know, one more, one more topic, and I'll let you go. You said that you were, um, that you were Christian. I take that as—

I am Christian.

Oh, you are?

Okay. Yeah, we'll get that clarified. So you are a Christian still. Did— does that play a role in your divergence at all, uh, your faith and how you've this path that you're on?

Um, for sure, because I, I believe there's something bigger than me in play, and that God is very much— I can see all through my life where God was touching and shaping, and, and where, um, now I think with my age and with where I am in life I can, you know, like when we're talking about finding peace, for me, that's finding God, you know, it's like, even just being submerged in nature and being able to just surrender to the possibilities of what's to come. And believing that our Creator has more beautiful things in store for me than I can even fathom. And whether that's in this lifetime or in, you know, when this lifetime's over, um, I don't know. But, um, that does— that, that faith and that belief does bring me a lot of peace.

Yeah, I think that's, that's— I think that's good ending. I think we're getting to this spot where it's this happy ending. You know, we've talked about a lot of things that aren't so— that are kind of unnerving. But what is then your hope? What's your hope for the future and what is your action to make that happen?

My hope for the future is that we can rebuild communities again. And I'm seeing that happening, actually. I think that that's the good stuff that's come out of this time. I think we were all just a bunch of individuals kind of clunking around, and there was this idea that community was, uh, necessary and important, almost seemed old-fashioned. And like we're seeing even here, like last Christmas, um, the Santa Claus parades were all shut down, right, because of COVID So, uh, one of the— our neighbors actually set up her own Santa Claus parade and everyone from our little rural area went out and they had like the septic truck was even decorated. And like the arborist guys that live in the local area put Santa in the bucket. And there was like horses and goats. And, you know, we were talking to neighbors and it was just, it was just absolutely beautiful. Unlike any Santa Claus parade I've ever been to. And like my husband's been active initiative in starting up a men's club here where they get together and they talk about like all sorts of things, like, and help each other out with different projects. And our local fire hall that went to a centralized location, these guys are looking at trying to bring back. So, you know, I was— we had two of our older neighbors over teaching us a card game last week, and they were telling us about how It used to be that the fire hall, like once, once a year they have a big picnic, but the fire hall was all operated by local people and the school teachers were hired by our local community and the healthcare, the doctor was interviewed by local people and brought into a little local clinic. And with this like centralization, all that got blown apart. And too, the relationships, right, that all went into that got blown apart. And so So we're really actively putting our energies into fostering that sort of sense of community again, because I think as wonderful as it is that we can be self-sustainable and we can grow our own food, you know, ultimately that's really not what it's all about. It's about leaning on each other and building relationships and having resilience within a community. You know, it does no good if I've got watchtowers all the way around my property, you know, and like all these sort of ideas that some people have. The real fortitude comes from building those relationships. So, and I see that happening. I see people that were maybe very different thinkers than us, they're still all sort of moving towards that idea of of putting their energies into that, of like, you know, even there's 4 young guys that have stepped up and are going to be volunteering for the local fire hall. Like, so that makes me really hopeful. And I really think that that's where we need to be going to. I think it's kind of foreign for us because of the way our culture is now. But yeah, I think for us anyways, that's really what we're trying to put our energy into.

I think that's neat. And that's the local level. I also see some value— well, a lot of value— in what you're doing with Substack. And I guess, is that the same as your member area? I'm part of that. And, uh, I feel like that's a neat place because that gives a sense of community, because that's a place where you can share uncensored and feel— I think we feel a sense of community there. And a sense of, you know, not being isolated. So I'm thankful that you do that and you found a way to be able to share without the big conglomerate parents decide what we can talk about and what we can't talk about. So I think that would be a good place to, to, to end is, is folks want to— are going to want to know more about you or follow you, where can they do that at?

Well, I'm on Instagram. I'm kind of slowly phasing away from there though.

You're like, I'm done, and then you come back for like—

I could just shut it off entirely, but it's where most of my Substack people come from.

So the writing on the wall. So you're— so ultimately you want people to come to the Substack. How do they find that?

Yeah, so it's just slowdownfarmstead.com. We'll bring you right there. Yeah.

What were you going to say about that?

I was just going to say that like it's good because like people can get like a taste of what the Substack is on Instagram. You know, it's a great place You don't have to put like all your stuff there, but then when people are like, oh, I do want more of this, then they can go on over and get it. And then, you know, that it's, it's a good way to advertise.

Isn't that cool that you can go direct to the people, right? Like you don't have to count on advertising money on that platform or another platform. Isn't that cool?

Oh, it's awesome. It's really awesome. I really hesitated to do it, but a couple friends really encouraged me to do it, and I'm, I'm really glad I did. It's a nice— it's nice too, like the comments are always really thoughtful and we get into some good discussions and stuff. I, yeah, I really like it.

Hesitation. What was the comment?

I always go to the comment section because I want you— I do. I want to see what other people are saying because like I have my thoughts on it, but which basically are mainly what you're saying.

All right, well, that's the community.

And so I love to see like what other what other people are saying. And, and like you said, people are very thoughtful, and, and it really does, um, bring some new perspective to what I'm thinking, you know. And I like that. I, I enjoy— I enjoy— I just enjoy it.

Yeah.

Thank you. I'm glad.

That's what this episode of Divergence we do with you on is. And I guess we should talk about some logistics of that, is we're— we want these shows encourage conversation. I don't know if you saw the Divergence with, uh, the Meat Smith. Did you see that one with Brandon?

Well, you know, because you sent me the link but it didn't work. But then I didn't get—

I'll send you that again. It looks like he's almost done with Joe Wingers. Yeah, and these are going to be discussion pieces. I mean, uh, it's not— it's not necessarily about homesteading, um, and what we want and what we do every month. We show one of these and we have our— we, we invite our friends, we have our community, about 30, 40 people, and we come once a month and we watch the movie and then we talk about it.

Oh wow, that's so cool.

Really good. Like, our group has— our, our group of friends, you know, we have like kind of like our core homesteading friends, but then we also have people that are not in our homesteading community that are coming to the talks. And so it's really good because we have such a diverse group of people and we laugh and we joke and say it's group therapy. And we get together and there's all— there's usually people crying, laughing, like we have the whole gamut of it. And it's really been great.

Like, I'll say this, it feels— if it's so rich, it feels like— we grew up Christian also, and we used to go to church. I say used to, we don't go to church anymore, but we still identify as a Christian. But that gathering where all I'm doing is facilitating and asking questions around, and it just kind of takes off. And I don't know, it's the closest thing to church I think I've ever experienced.

That sounds beautiful. That's wonderful.

Amazing. If you ever get out of Canada, you're welcome to come.

Send me a hot air balloon, would you?

Part 2 live in our old farmhouse for $500. Yeah.

We, and we use, we just do like a big potluck, and so everybody brings like homegrown goodness, and it's a lot of fun. We just have a really good time, and, um, it's, it has been really rich, especially this last, last time was very, it was amazing. So that's really good.

I think you're, you're subject— Rebecca and I are probably not coming.

Uh, no, uh, we'll probably, probably can't get in.

We probably can't get in, but our crew The crew is fully vaccinated, hopefully. Do you think they'll be able to get in? I guess that we need to talk about logistics here. Okay, they'll be able to get it. They can go and work and be there.

Oh yeah, if they're vaccinated, it's not an issue.

I mean, we would love to come. I don't know if we would try to drive. They say it's a little easier driving through the border. Yeah, our dentist, our dentist is, um, but see, he's Canadian, but he lives in America.

He lives here and he works here, and he's not vaccinated, and he was able to get in. Um, for, uh, uh, but I think this is—

could he get out?

Yeah, he came back. I don't know if he's got his green card. He must have his green card in America.

I have no idea, but he came back. I mean, he— I mean, he—

we had a plane, or what did he take?

No, he drove. He drove through on purpose.

It's easier to drive through than he flew to Detroit and then crossed the border. Out from wherever near Detroit. And, um, I don't know if you went to like a small— I know when we crossed into Canada, we went to small border crossings, and it seemed to be— it wasn't hard to get in. We didn't even have any restrictions, but it just seemed less daunting. When we went in, um, BC, we, we went through a very large border crossing But we took our, our converted school bus then, and it was— it felt really like nerve-wracking. I don't know. Um, the small ones in Ontario, it didn't seem to be, you know, although coming back in they were really rude to us because I really— yeah, I handed them all our passports and then we have 4— we had 4 kids.

So what is this, a clown car?

I know, and we were driving a minivan and he And he was like, is this a clown car? And I was like, are you calling my children clowns? Because this is really rude. You're being— and then he was like, where are you? Where are you from? And I was like, North Carolina. And he's like, where are you going? And I'm like, well, our home, which was our bus, was at a campground. And I was like, well, we're going home. He's like, you're going home? And I'm like, to our bus, which is 10 miles away. And he was just like, rah. And I was like—

It was the USA.

He was so rude. He was the USA.

Yeah, the USA.

I was like, look, we are—

this is the Canadian agents were so nice. We have our passports, we don't understand because we're like the US citizen, you think it'd be—

it was so weird. And we was just like, we ended up going because we crossed into Ontario twice because we saw Jam Fartier, but then we also saw, um, Permaculture Orchard, Steven, uh, Steven, and then that's another thing that gave me a hard time because I was like, well, I don't say his name right.

Oh yeah, we're gonna go Stefan, we don't know how to say his last name. You don't know the last name of your friend?

I was like, I know it. And I was like, and he was like, it was just frustrating. Anyways, so yeah, so we crossed in twice and we saw— we went to two different borders of that because I was like, I'm not going back to that guy, he was a jerk.

Uh, when do you think the best time to come film you is? And it could be any time because you're gonna be the season finale probably.

Oh, okay, probably like late June, early July-ish, or like mid-June to mid-July-ish. What do you think of that?

Yeah, I mean, that sounds like that would be the height of your growing season.

I mean, we want it to come when it— when you— when you're like, this is when it looks the best.

Yeah, that's probably it.

Well, so I'll— my homework, well, I'll send you, uh, Brandon's— the one— the, the show we did on Brandon, and then Jill's will be out pretty soon, so you'll get the vibe. Uh, will you— did you get in? Did you— are you in Abundance Plus? Did I get you a link to get inside of our network?

No.

Okay, I'll get you a lifetime membership there. You can go watch our show Rooted, and that will kind of give you an idea of how your show will end up looking.