Finding Freedom in Self-Sufficiency

Hi and welcome to season 2 of The Homestead Education. Episode one is gonna be talking all about obtaining the freedoms of self-sufficiency. So who else has had an incredibly long summer? I know I have between finishing up my second homeschool curriculum fair with my kids, trying to make some time for a little bit of summer fun like swimming in huckleberry picking. But I’m back and I’m excited to announce that you can now order Introduction to Homestead Science. This is a full year science curriculum for middle and high school students. It’s an approximately 400 page science text with a 200 page workbook with a test and answer book. This curriculum has 18 two week units that will cover many aspects of home study including land engines, animals, gardening crops, food sciences, hunting, foraging and homestead management. This beautiful full color text is a one of a kind new take on teaching homestead, agriculture and home sciences.

The curriculum is now available for both digital and the print versions. My topic for season 2, I have planned for months. I had decided to cover many aspects of continuing to homestead and homeschool after the pandemic, how to afford it, embrace it and expand on it. Then the announcement of a nationwide recession was made and it made me realize how much more these endeavors are not just desired but required. The freedoms of self-sufficiency are how we ensure a thriving future. I plan to have some amazing guests chat with us about finances, simple living, growing your own food and preserving this lifestyle for future generations.

So this last week for me has been an exhausting, beautiful and exciting experience. Last week was our county fair full of livestock shows, auctions, watermelon, eating contests and delicious food. Our fair up here in North Idaho is different from any other fair I’ve been a part of in my many years. Involved in 4-H, our fair could literally be taken off of a page in Charlotte’s Web and I don’t know that anyone would have it any other way. We have zucchini races, local bands, local ladies jams with blue ribbons and carnival or fair food. Only local restaurant owners and their food trucks. Our grandstands were completely full with standing room only- watching the community’s children compete in gunny sack races, tug of war and horse events, but the focus of this fair is hands down the youth livestock exhibits and projects. These kids work so hard all year raising quality meat and training breeding stock.

They learn sciences, arts and cooking along with record keeping and public speaking. I’m a 4-H leader for multiple groups of kids and nothing is better than the smiles on their faces and the pride they feel after each show, culminating to a long week ending with the Youth Livestock auction. Our community comes out for these kids at the auction like no other, making them feel like they’re a part of something bigger. I’d wanted to bring on a guest this week to talk about four H, but I’ll tell you what fair is way too exhausting of a week to attempt to accomplish anything but celebrating the kids’ efforts. So you get to talk to me about this amazing program. I’m a 30 year 4-H veteran. During my tenure as a member, I raised rabbit, swine and a lamb one time as well as shooting sports.

I was a junior leader for my swine group and taught shooting both in my club and at my 4-H camp where I was a counselor. I was a livestock judge, participated in high 4-H and the National 4-H Exchange program as well as statewide public speaking competitions. This last part was actually really huge for me because I was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome when I was 8. If you’re unfamiliar with Tourette’s, it’s a neurological disorder that causes me to have severe uncontrollable facial twitches and noises in my throat, especially when I’m nervous, try calming those nerves down. This is the story I tell my 4-H kids when they’re scared to give a presentation or talk to a judge. So for those of you that might be unfamiliar with 4-H, it’s a nationwide program ran at the state level through land grant colleges for youth education of various sciences and life skills.

It is most popularly known for the livestock projects, but that’s just a piece of what 4-H offers. In some states it’s even part of the public education system. There are even programs for children as young as five years old in addition to livestock projects. My kids have taken veterinary science, hiking, rifle, photography and cake decorating. There are 4-H curriculums that can be purchased that we have used in our homeschool as well. I’m a huge supporter of this program and if it’s something that you believe your child would also benefit from, please contact your local extension office for more information. I’ll add a link on how to find that extension office in the show notes. 

So like my usual M.O., I’m sure you’re wondering how this applies to my subject of freedom and self-sufficiency because having kids in 4-H adds extra time slots in your planner and often a financial requirement. However, it needs to be viewed as an investment in your future. Even if you don’t have kids. Can you donate to this program? Buy an animal at the livestock auction? Purchase farm products from a 4-H member?  Can you volunteer your time or expertise? 

Much like my homeschool curriculum, if you can have your kids invested in home setting, they will help. They will work, research and want to be a part of the conversation. I can talk about how this helps the kids all I want, but I’d love for you to hear it from my kids and form your own opinions. Here with me today I have my 13 year old twins Savannah and Wyatt.

Hi, I’m Savannah.

Hi, I’m Wyatt.

Kody: All right, go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Savannah: Um, about myself. Hi <laugh>. So, as my mom stated, I’m 13 and homeschooled. 

Kody: What do you like to do?

Savannah:  I like playing softball and doing horse riding lessons. I really like doing drawing and stuff and everything that’s related, anything and everything.

Kody: All right. Wyatt, tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Wyatt: I’m 13 years old and I’ve been doing six years of 4-H. I am a homeschooler. My favorite sport is baseball. I really like doing that. I really love having cows and pigs for 4-H and doing hiking for the 4-H community.

Kody: So Savannah, how many years have you done 4-H?

Savannah: I’ve been doing 4-H for six years now.

Kody: What projects have you completed?

Savannah: Cake decorating, vet science, doing poultry and stuff and market pigs.

Kody: You did a lot with poultry. What are some of the things you did with that?

Savannah: I showed my hen. I put some birds in open classes, some quail and I did some market birds too.

Kody: You do a lot with birds at home. Uh, what type of projects have you worked on at home with your birds?

Savannah: cleaning up the coop, um, we incubate um, chicken eggs and quail eggs and I do most of that. Um, I get a little bit of help with checking the stuff with the incubator, but other than that I’m the one who watches ’em, pulls the chicks once they hatch, um, and feed and water ’em every day when they’re um, still down in our berg room.

Kody: So Wyatt, how many years have you done four H?

Wyatt: I’ve been doing six years in 4-H.

Kody: What projects have you completed?

Wyatt: I’ve completed hiking, photography, swine and cattle, Dairy cattle.

Kody: Did you also do goats one year?

Wyatt: Yes, I did do goats. I did really good in goats but they just weren’t really all that fun.

Kody: It’s okay to try things and decide that they’re not for you.

Wyatt: Goats are just too stubborn.

Kody: <laugh> very

Wyatt: But adorable.

Kody: So what are your responsibilities at home with these animals?

Wyatt: I have to feed them in the morning and night and I help move the pigs and help build injured animals and help the moms give birth if they’re having trouble and repairs. Give shots to the pigs.

Kody: Yeah, I have to say as a busy mom I love that I can send my teenagers up to the barn to handle advanced things with our animals. All right. So how do you feel four H has affected you at home and in school?

Savannah: Well, we’ve definitely been able to learn a lot of new things and with doing homeschool and stuff, we have been able to do stuff that we can be involved in and help us when it comes time to get ready for four H again.

Kody: What about you Wyatt?

Wyatt:  think around the house it really helped us deal with problem solving and dealing with our projects a bit better. And in school we 4-H helped us keep records and planning just like you would in school.

Kody: That’s awesome. Do you feel like 4-H has impacted your life goals Savannah?

Savannah: Oh, well I’ve always wanted to be a vet for years now and I was able to take vet science class, like projects and stuff in 4-H so I’ve been able to learn a lot of new things there and I’ve also been able to do other activities like cake decorating and stuff, which I didn’t enjoy as much as vet science. It’s not something that I’m really passionate about, but it does help me with learning how to do different things to where I enjoy making cakes for me and my family.

Kody: That’s an awesome life skill to be able to learn some extra cooking and things like that and some side projects. Wyz, I, you probably hear me pause a lot and before I say his name cause I wanna call him by his nickname Wyz, but I’d like to respect him and call him Wyatt during the podcast.

Wyatt: It’s all right. My mom can call me Wyz all the time, <laugh>. 

Kody: So yeah, how do you feel like it’s impacted your life goals?

Wyatt: It really helped me show more confidence in what I really want to do. Like my first year having a dairy cattle for 4-H, I really enjoyed showing my cow and it really helped me boost my confidence for the next year. This year I was getting ready for my show and got kicked and I was really, I don’t know how to say it, like down in the dumps after it and really just talking about it boosted my confidence- stuff about how well I’ve done with my cow.

Kody: So you’ve done a lot with your dairy calf. You wanna tell us a little bit about her?

Wyatt: Yeah, she was born on our property. Her mom was in the pen she is in right now. I go to feed about an hour after I’m supposed to because I overslept and there’s a fresh calf right there in the pen and I go down to my parents and we yelled third. She was a three month old calf when she went to fair for the very first time. So, she was like, a little calf and saw all these like skiers and horses and all these other animals and she was just, yeah.

Kody: So how many years have you shown her now?

Wyatt: I’ve shown her for two years now.

Kody: Who trained her?

Wyatt: I did.

Kody: You did all of her training?

Wyatt: Well yeah.

Kody: Is this the first calf that you’ve trained?

Wyatt: No, I’ve, I had two others.

Kody: So how Savannah, how does four H make you feel about your community?

Savannah: I just really like how everybody helps out with all of us kids who like to do 4-H and how all the parents have volunteered to help with shows and moving animals and how the judges will come and take their time to judge us and teach us how we can do better and stuff for other years.

Kody: How does that make you feel Wyz?

Wyatt: I really think the community really loves 4-H to help the 4-H kids and all the people that help make the fair happen in future years. And when auction comes around for the other animals, they’re really generous to the 4-H kids.

Kody: What does that make you want to do for your community?

Wyatt: just help people more around in our like community that we have and I also really want to just help other people.

Kody: So Savannah, would you recommend 4-H to other kids?

Savannah: Yes, because I mean it’s just really fun things to do and I babysit for this family and I found out that one of their kids was doing 4-H and I told him about all the other things he could do and he seemed really interested in it and he was gonna look into it and see what else other things he could do for next year.

Kody: Awesome. Wyz, would you recommend it?

Wyatt: Yes, I would. It also depends on the kid I recommend it to. Like, if they’re not into animals, I would suggest doing hiking, cake decorating, or photography, but if they really wanna do animal, it’s just for their first year and then like a goat or lamb or something.

Kody: Some smaller livestock, a little bit more manageable. Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s really good advice. So Savannah, do you feel like home studying and self-sufficiency are important?

Savannah: Yes.

Kody: Why?

Savannah: How to word it. 

Kody: Well what do you think the benefits of our homestead have been?

Savannah: I really liked it since we started our own homestead and stuff. It’s just been like we’ve learned new things every day.

Kody: What does self-sufficiency mean to you?

Savannah: Being able to know how to handle something and being able to do it yourself without having to relearn it multiple times.

Kody: So Wyz, Do you feel like home setting and self-sufficiency are important? 

Wyatt: Yes, especially in the world that’s been going on right now, like Covid and with Covid, all the um, prices have just skyrocketed. So like being able to grow your own vegetables, deal with your own animals and just being able to live off land would be really helpful for some families.

Kody: Awesome. Is there anything else either of you want to add?

Wyatt: My future life goal is to become a professional baseball player, in a couple years I really wanna do steers for 4-H.

Kody: All right, Savannah, is there anything else you wanna add?

Savannah: With supporting your local 4-H,  like fair and like 4-H people who do 4-H and stuff around where you live. Just going to the fair and showing your support for the kids there will help just a lot too.

Kody: It really boosts their confidence and makes them feel super great about what they’re doing. All right, well thank you guys. I’m so glad that you could take a few minutes outta your evening chores to chat with me and I really hope that this helps other families decide what they wanna do with 4-H and understand how important it is to everyday folks like us. Yeah, well that was super fun. I kind of put them on the spot, so I think they did a really great job and I’m excited for some projects I’m gonna have them involved in in the future.

So I’d like to move on to some tips that I hold onto when I’m focusing on cost cutting and self-sufficiency. It’s really a mindset over hard skills, although hard skills help. 

The first thing is embracing a simpler life. Do you remember when Covid lockdowns first happened when you had nothing to do and began embracing new hobbies? That was actually a really exciting time for me. I felt like I’d been given the gifted time because as a busy mom and an entrepreneur, there’s never enough time for anything. So sometimes when I need a reset, I remember those days and set myself up for the gift of time. First, I’ll often take a Sunday and do food prep. Pre-made breakfasts, lunch and dinners save hours in my day and only take a short amount of time on Sunday if I multitask. They also reduce trips to the grocery store. We live 45 minutes away from the closest store, so I’m looking at a minimum of two hours if I don’t have milk. Although even if you live right next to the store or have to pass it every day on your way home from work, how much money are you gonna waste on impulse buys a drink for the drive home or a snack? 

Next I make a list. If I know everything that I need to accomplish, I am more likely to not feel stressed out and complete my tasks in a timely manner. This gives me extra time for new endeavors, new hobbies, or simply relaxing. Sometimes I even do a couple lists, one for the day, one for the week, and one for the month so that I can always visually see what needs to happen. I find that, if I’m scattered, it takes way longer. Then I pick a new, everyday item that can be made each week or each month, whichever feels the most comfortable or attainable. Sometimes with these projects, there’s small upfront costs, but usually save a ton of money in the long run. The key to switching to a more self-sufficient life is changing one item at a time so that it can become part of your everyday life before the next one is added. Also, some things still require supply purchases until you can work more habits into your life.

An example is making broth. Each week you can cook a chicken, and then use the carcass and scrap veggies to make a broth. The chicken’s meat can be used for a variety of purposes and isn’t just baked chicken for dinner every week. The meat can be used for tacos, soups, chicken salad, and so much more. I think I’m gonna have to do a whole podcast just on everything you can do with chicken or any of the meats because I feel like a lot of people just, you buy like a whole chicken and you do a baked chicken with it. You buy chicken breasts and you use that for, you know, some sort of baked dish and then like it’s just you feel like you have to use certain parts for certain things and you can really take a whole chicken and do several different things with it. And I think it’s really important to break the mindset of the supply chain chicken versus a homestead chicken and everything that can happen with it. But anyways, then if you make broth one time a week, you can easily have a gallon of broth and it’s so easy to accomplish. I’m often doing it while I’m doing other things and my family benefits all week. Well, technically this broth is free because it’s made out of throwaway items.

The part where I have to rely on the supply chain is, I have not mastered 52 meat chickens every year that are ready to go at the appropriate age. And if I butchered a laying hen every week, I’d run outta chickens really fast. So if I don’t have chickens in the freezer, I buy them on sale from the grocery store. Although, I will freeze carcasses at butcher time. So when we do butcher a bunch of chickens at once, if we breast them out and stuff, I just put the carcasses in like a produce bag and freeze them and when I’m ready to make broth, I just thaw one out, roast it, like put the same seasonings on it. If I was gonna roast a chicken like a whole chicken and use that for my broth. So see the show notes for my broth recipe. 

Another one I like is making my own soaps and cleaners. There’s so many recipes out there and it really just depends on your own wants. Are you trying to save money, not use store bought products, have sensitive skin? So I’m hoping to have a soap maker on the show this season, so I’m not gonna elaborate too much, especially cuz I haven’t done any hand creams or soaps. But I do have a couple of videos on my YouTube on making laundry soaps. Just remember what so many are saying right now, embracing our past is not a step backwards, it’s actually a step forward. 

So the next mantra that must be followed is not giving up. Homesteading is hard. It’s dirty and backbreaking, but every result is so worth it. Every mistake teaches you how to reach your next result. However, there is a difference between giving up and changing. We change what we do all the time. Sometimes changing is because we learn something new or there’s a market for something that can make us some money or something. We can get cheaper. It’s okay to make those changes, but don’t give up just because it’s hard or you made a mistake.

Next thing you have to remember is you don’t have to strike it rich overnight and honestly you’re not going to, not in homesteading. This point on money is yeah, you’re not gonna become a millionaire from your tomatoes or a rich cattle baron cuz you raised this here for your freezer. Although, wouldn’t that be nice? What you can do is build, over time, to reach a place where you can afford to work part-time while you homeschool. Or replace the cost of items over time until you can afford larger purchases, like a beef steer. For example, we use about a quart of grape jelly every couple of weeks. It takes three and a half pounds of grapes to make one quart that works out to just a couple of five gallon buckets full of grapes. And I already have jars. If you or someone you know has grapes, you know that you can fill a five gallon bucket at no time flat.

This can work out to $150 a year of savings for us. If I make six changes like this using products from my gardener that I have traded for, this is enough money to buy a steer or replacement heifer for us each year, or, because we already own or breed these animals ourselves. Those changes pay for the hay that we need for them over the winter. If I double my efforts the next year, I essentially end up with 500 pounds of free meat. Now putting that into perspective, doesn’t it make it easier to see how making these small changes make big impacts? Now in some situations, an extra year of cost-cutting is needed to afford fencing or other supplies, but these changes add up fast. I wanna talk about some tips to homestead and homeschool frugally. These are really important topics when you’re getting started.

The sticker shock of getting started with homeschooling and homesteading can really deter people. Everyone who’s getting started always looks up the price of a brand new curriculum or automatic feeders and says, there’s no way we can do this. But oh yes, you can always, always, always a yard sale. Check Facebook or Craigslist before purchasing anything. Another option is just put up a post on Facebook, or ask friends for items. You would be surprised how many items people have laying around that they no longer want that are either gonna be free or very low cost to you. Many of our homestead and homeschool items come from this option if you can. When a friend says, sure, I have an old chicken feeder we aren’t using anymore. Come grab it. Take them a jar or jam, and then they’ll remember next time you need something.

Also, when getting started with homeschooling, I often suggest investing in a good printer and downloading a free or low cost curriculum, you can find options for all grades. Even older kids on sites like the Good and the Beautiful or Teachers Pay Teachers, I have linked my favorite printer in the show notes. It’s an Epson EcoTank, it’s under $300 and I use less than $40 an ink a year, while often printing a large textbook for each subject. For my four older kids, it ends up saving me hundreds of dollars. Then I either bind them or throw them on a yard sale binder, and honestly, my kids get excited when I find a good deal at yard sales and will help me clean up the items. 

If you want more cost saving tips, check out my previous episode called Homemade Cost Cutting. This episode has blown up, being my most popular episode to date, I will continue to add more tips, budget sheet downloads and links to help you as we navigate through another national economic setback.

Did you know that I offer coaching and household management consulting? Follow the link in the show notes to see if a 2-hour consultation call is right for you. The call includes brainstorming and strategizing, a follow-up written plan with resources and links, and a one month accountability email, plus a free month membership to the Homestead Business membership launching in the fall. I’m currently lining up guests for this and next season if you have a topic that you would love covered, email me at hello@thehomesteadeducation.com. Or if you would like to be a guest this season or in the future, reach out as well. I’m looking forward to having some chats with you.

This episode of the Homestead Education is brought to you by Lehman’s Hardware, your one-stop home setting supply store that ships all over the United States. Thank you for joining me today at the Homestead Education, and I hope that I have given you something to think about this week to help others find me. Please comment and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. You can also follow me on Facebook at The Homestead Education and Instagram at Homestead_education. Do you have questions that you would like answered or just wanna say hi? Please email me at hello@thehomesteadeducation.com. Until next time, keep growing.