Would our 12 Year Old Self Like us Now?

Doing a little something special over the next few videos here. Uh, we're on vacation, like a vacation vacation. Like, I'm not editing, so we're shooting this beforehand and we wanted to get you guys some content, content, well, and context. That's context. That's what this is going to be all about, a 5-part series on our history, our story. We haven't really sat down and talked about that with you guys, so we're gonna do it now. First video Growing up. So what was it like being little Becky?

Well, I was really little, like for my age, and I was pretty thin. I was nicknamed Boney Ramone and had knobs for knees, that whole thing. I was pretty quiet. Around strangers and people I didn't know, but around people I was familiar with, I was pretty talkative and could be— I would have to be asked to stop talking. I could talk a lot.

You were well-behaved?

I was well-behaved. I was well-behaved. I always said that I wanted to— my thought was, if I'm well-behaved for my parents, then my children will be well-behaved for me. But then I married him, so I'm sure he'll tell you some stories from his childhood.

I'll make notes right here to make sure I don't forget.

Yeah, he was definitely like— my mom and dad would just look at me and I'd be like, I'm so sorry, and, you know, act straight. And so I was really timid, I guess you could say. And I think that's it.

Where did you grow up?

So I grew up in Florida primarily. I was born in Texas, grew up in Florida. And my parents are both from Florida, and so like my grandparents were there, some aunts and uncles were there. Not all of them, but most.

I grew up here in Western North Carolina near Asheville. Even going to the land that we're living on now, only 3 miles from here, but it's always been in the family. And so the land we're on now is Burrell Holler, and I can remember riding here on our bikes. I can remember Pop bringing us here. I can remember driving here at 14 years old to do various chores for my dad. So we lived in the country, but we were very much town people too. We went to private school and drove to town every day, and then my dad went to a men's prayer breakfast on Saturday. We'd go in for that and oftentimes deliver wood on Saturday in town. And then Sunday we would go into town too, church, sometimes morning and night. So we were country people who were always very much in town. The town part was my mom and the country part was my dad. I, on the other hand, did not know about this karma of how you treat your parents is how your kids are going to treat you. I can remember—

I didn't know the word karma though. I just was like, I better—

you believe in that. I don't know.

I better be good now so that, um, my kids are good.

You have a lot of those in your life, these little rules that involve like energy or something. I don't know. Anyway, more about me.

Well, yeah, we get back to you.

Okay. I can remember being babysitting. Well, which babysitting story do you want to hear? Well, one time we watched Gremlins, the movie, with a babysitter, and it was over and time to bed, time to go to bed. Well, I figured I was a gremlin now, and I started acting like a gremlin, and I was not going to go to bed. I hated going to bed. She said, Justin, you got to go to bed. Well, I jumped up as high as I could and came down and kicked down on her foot and broke the babysitter's foot. Incident number 1. Incident number 2, you guys tell me which one's worse. I— it was time to go to bed. Well, I had a little BB gun like every little boy in the country has, and I thought, okay, I'm gonna sit up here in this bed and then with my BB gun. And the babysitter came and she went turn off that light, and I said, you turn off that light, I'm gonna shoot you with this BB gun. Let me say, I kept the light on, but I don't think that babysitter ever came back.

No, I don't know who they got to babysit after that. I mean, Word on the creek was those Rhodes, that one particular Rhodes child was a little rough.

You know, big country boy, country, classic country boy, had gals all our life. Classic Floridian girl swimming in the pool every day. What's a surprising fun fact from our childhood, Rebecca, that people might not know? Oh gosh, I knew the answer to this but I forgot.

I know we can—

oh, I know, I know, I'll go.

Yeah, you go.

You think about it. Don't tell anybody. Do not tell anybody. I was born in California. Southern California. In Pomona. My dad went there on business. And he lived there in California for a while on business. And yeah, I was born there. But we moved back within 2 years. And at one point it was cool to be from California. And I can brag on that when I was growing up in high school and middle school. But now it's not so cool anymore. So, I'm North Carolinian through and through.

My parents used to come to this area on vacation like 2 to 3 times a year. They loved the mountains of Western North Carolina, um, and so we would come here on vacation a lot. And I have lots of memories of coming here, um, and doing all the touristy things that one does when they come to this area.

What, as children, pivoted us towards this lifestyle, if anything? What, what planted a seed? Because were you a farmer? Did you farm? Maybe we should answer that first.

No. So growing up, the closest thing to a farmy lifestyle that we had— so we lived in the suburbs, um, Palm Beach Gardens, and we lived in Horseshoe Acres, and that was in town still, but it had like 1-2 acre home sites. So you would build your home or buy your home in that development, and then you could have horses. So that would be the closest thing I would say that, um, we came— like, I want to say people behind us had chickens. I don't really remember.

That doesn't count if you weren't involved.

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't us. I'm just trying to think of other people in the neighborhood did more, because not everybody had horses. So some people just liked the extra space. Um, not a lot of people actually had horses. Everybody had a pool. Um, some people had tennis courts, and I think it was just like the— it wasn't— I think it was the whole, the whole idea was that you had more space. Now, there was many people that did have horses. We were one of those people.

But, um, my dad kept cows, and that's the extent of it. Maybe 15 to 30 head of, uh, of beef cows, and we just, uh, have them in one continuous field and feed them hay and grain and He did rotate fields, I remember. So I knew general rules about, you know, how to mess with an electric fence and how cows act and stuff like that. Oh, when I graduated from high school, he said, "You could have $100 bills or you can have this calf, and you can raise the calf here and we'll take it to market in 2 years." I said, "I'll take the calf," and in 2 years I had $600 from taking that calf to the market. What, if anything, planted a seed or benefited us now in our lifestyle now, which is completely different from how we were growing up? Yeah.

So my family, we moved a lot. So my dad was a builder and we would move to different houses that he either built or I guess, yeah, that he built. So I'm trying to think of how this all went down. So like, you know, we would move up and we would have a better house than we had before, basically kind of thing. And then we— he did remodel this one home that we lived in. And that was in the Horseshoe Acres place. So the construction market really crashed in the early '90s. And so they ended up selling that house because it was more than they could afford at that point. And so then we moved into a rental. And then, so it just seemed like we moved a lot. I wonder if like the stability of this lifestyle where you stay in one place and like you live here year after year after year, kind of made me say, like, there was an allure of that stability of like same house, same land type thing that drew me to this lifestyle.

The homesteading is a lot of work, but so is the YouTubing and entrepreneurial end of it and balancing all different kinds of things. Well, my dad used to— sure, we could go to a friend's house on Friday night, but he had to pick us up on Saturday morning so that we could work all Saturday. While my friends were inside watching cartoons, and it drove me nuts because I just wanted to sit down and watch a cartoon. And hated it, hated it, hated it. But now I love it because I'm the hardest worker in the room.

You know, you had that work ethic put into you as a child.

Yeah, don't ever stop working. That has come in very handy, and being a homesteading YouTuber is very conducive to being a hard worker. Yeah, what were our parents' jobs? One of you guys asked this, when somebody in our member area asked this. That might give some context to who we are.

So my mom stayed at home, um, for the majority of it. She did work for my dad's construction company as his like bookkeeper, secretary type thing, just kind of keeping all of everything in line. And then my dad had his own construction business.

My mom was a speech teacher at the very school we went to, probably to save my dad some money. My dad was— he grew up sustenance farming on this in Broholler, and it was hard and it didn't pay well. And he was an entrepreneur and got— I don't know how he got into it, but he ended up being an orthodontics salesman, and he did really well. And he even invented some of the, the, the, the, the wire for the flatbows that straightened the retainers, the retainer wires that straightened people's teeth. They put that in at night, and he even gave me a job making those wires for a very long time, like 20 years, part-time job.

And it's close to 20 years.

So a lot of times he traveled when we were young, but he also took us with him as much as he could, even when we were little. I can't believe he did that because it's not like farming where I'm just out there broadforking or something, right? I'm like sitting in a reception office by myself at a very young age.

It was the '80s. It was the '80s, so it was just way different then.

We're gonna talk about our first jobs here in one second. Let's talk about this real quick. If we were 12 years old, let's go back to our 12-year-old self and they came to visit us now and stayed at our house for a week, what would they think? They came and stayed for the summer. I wanna hear what your little 12-year-old self would think. Would you have a good time?

I don't know.

Or would she be grossed out?

I don't know if she would have a good time because see, I grew up in the suburbs and like we did have dirt 'cause we did have horses and like, you know, like it wasn't, I liked playing in the dirt. I wasn't so much of a priss. I wasn't so much of a diva or anything like that. But at the same time, I did seek comfort all the time. I mean, it's, you know, I feel like now, it would depend upon when I came. So when I was a kid, we came to North Carolina. I went to summer camp here, north of Asheville actually. For 2 weeks. And I remember I signed up for swimming and I was like, this is gonna be so much fun. I loved swimming. I loved swimming. I swam all the time in our swimming pool. Um, and so I was like, this can be so much fun. And then I got there and y'all, the water was cold. It was really cold. And I had a really, really, really hard time with it. And I remember thinking, this is not like at home. This is very different. Um, so I think that it would've been a really, it would've, it would be really strange for me. I don't think, I think like the the food we eat would have— wouldn't have been weird, um, because we ate a whole foods diet growing up most of the time. I mean, we did eat, you know, sugar and sugar cereals and desserts and stuff like that. I mean, maybe I would have turned my nose up to it. I don't think I would have because I feel like we eat pretty, pretty normal food. I think that I probably would have liked it once I like got into it. I think at first I would have been nervous and afraid, um, My thought as a, as a child is that I would grow up and I would marry somebody who worked in a bank and we would have a couple kids and live on the Intercoastal. Like, my life is so far different than that. Um, but that's, but that's because that was the context that I grew up in, you know. Um, so yeah, yeah. What was your 12-year-old self?

Well, I feel like my 12-year-old self would have liked it now. My 12-year-old self did not like working, and there is working involved. I like working now, but I didn't always. I would like to think that I'd be like Jonah and Josiah's friends, Sam and John, when they come to town. They want to come and help on the farm. And yeah, we do, we work. And when they came, we were working, what, that in the spring, summer, it's 3 to 4 hours in the morning. But it's kind of, it's different kind of work, and it's, it's not like mucking stalls for 4 hours. Yeah, it's like going and messing with the pigs, then go to the sheep, then go to the cows, and there's always some excitement going on. But then there's the rest of the day to play forts, to, uh, go exploring in the woods, whatever. I would like to think that I would be like Sam and John and like it, or like Cousin JD when he came and visited us, just really embrace the country lifestyle for a bit.

Now my 12-year-old self would have loved being homeschooled.

Yes, she would have.

I would have loved it. I hated going to school just for the sheer fact that I think I had to interact with people. I was really—

you and your mom are tight. Somewhere we're going to talk about our first job, I guess. Is it here? Okay, right there. So what was our, uh, before we get the first job, what was our health like growing up? Like, you already talked about it, you ate pretty much whole foods.

We did eat whole foods. I mean, we did eat junk food too, you know, processed packaged food. My health was seemingly good. Um, I did develop an autoimmune disease in my late teens, so that would have started in my childhood. Because it takes a while for it to develop.

I would have eaten— we ate a lot of casseroles. My mom cooked a lot of casseroles. Uh, we ate out maybe once or twice, 3 times a week. And, uh, I can remember eating ice cream every night at one point, just regular ice cream. I can remember frozen bacon cheeseburgers in the freezer that we took. Corn dogs.

Yeah, the frozen corn dogs. We didn't eat any of that.

Go to town. You did when you came to my house.

I did. I ate it when I came to his house, but my mom—

so what was your first job? Was it Binion's?

No, it was at Quincy's.

Quincy's here in North Carolina?

Yeah, because I was 16. I just turned 16.

Quincy's— people don't know who Quincy's is.

So I turned 16 right before we moved here. Um, I turned 16 and then we moved here a month later. And so then I got my first job at Quincy's. It was a buffet and you like went in and, you know, got all what you— I guess it was like a buffet in that not not that people like stood behind it and served it, but like there would be like a bowl of green beans, or I guess you could order a steak. I don't remember how it worked. You could get mashed potatoes, stuff like that. And then you would come to me, which was— I was the cashier, and I would ring you out, and then you would go and sit down. Maybe they had a buffet. I think they did. I don't quite remember. I don't quite remember. What it was like, but it was, um, it was junk. I remember one time they had me make eggs and it was a powder that I mixed with water and, um, then I had to scramble them, or I had to like, you know, cook them on the pan or whatever. Um, yeah, way different than real food. I used to make the iced tea. I do remember I used to make the sweet tea. It had so much sugar in it.

My first job, uh, I believe it was an entrepreneurial venture, and that was— I'd watched the movie Beethoven, had St. Bernard in it. And I always wanted St. Bernards, and it seemed like getting a St. Bernard was kind of expensive, and I was probably about 13, 14 years old. Well, I thought, well, if I get a St. Bernard, well, wait, I could get a male and a female and breed them and kind of pay for the whole operation. Well, I ended up, by the time I was 14, getting my dad to drive me to Raleigh. We got a female, male, I don't know, we ended up with a male. At the height of it, we had 2 females and 1 male because you have to breed them only once a year. They come into heat every 6 months, so They would give us 2 litters a year. We'd time it so it'd be born during Christmas, and that was kind of the beginning of my, like, solo entrepreneur adventure. I did get a real job at Walmart when I was 16. I don't know where— what that motivation was coming from, but I only lasted about 6 weeks. I got— I saw the paychecks. They were telling me when I had to show up, when I didn't, what you had to do. Looking back now, I was basically working for somebody else's dream, and I walked out of there and I was like, nope. And I started a lawn care business. I said, Pop, can I— I'll give you 20% of the revenue, you let me use your mowers. And me and a friend got into it. I tried to hire you at some point.

Yeah, you did try to hire me.

Why wouldn't you hire— why wouldn't you work for me?

My parents.

You were going to be a good lawn mower.

My parents wouldn't let me.

Well, anyway, the, the, the, the, the dogs ended up paying my way through college. Yeah, I paid for my own college straight up, no debt. You know, community college and then University of North Carolina Asheville, and got me through college. That and other entrepreneur businesses that we'll talk about later. Where were we on filming? Like, how is this all gonna end up to this? Well, I would make movies when I was very young. VHS, camcorders, and we would do skits. I hope I can find that one day because there was this skit and I had no shirt on. Little whiny boy, probably Jonah's age. And my brother was acting like, you know, he was kissing my sister. You know, they put their hand between each other and they were kissing. I'd like, I would come in, get your hands off my woman, and push him down. He's like so much bigger than me and everything. We just have these crazy little skits.

It's pretty funny.

So we got to find those one day.

Yeah.

So I've always had a camera in my hand.

Yeah, Justin is always taking. I remember that you were always taking photos and films. And stuff like that. You were always documenting in some way.

Yes. Next video, we're going to talk about dating and meeting— meeting and dating. So tune in for that. I guess it's coming out tomorrow, uh, in this series on our story. So see you then.