Preparing for Our Future & Behind the Scenes

So, today's episode is a little bit different than most of our episodes where we are going in on a specific topic and exploring it, and learning about it. Today's episode is a much more personal episode, sharing some things that have been going on here, things that are coming, exciting things that are happening on our homestead. And I'm also sharing how my faith and some of that has been influencing some of these decisions. So, if you're someone who's like, "No, I really just like the how-to information. I don't really care so much about the personal side of things, or hearing that stuff," then this might not be your cup of tea. It might be an episode that you decide to skip. But I know when I listen to podcasts, I actually really enjoy when I get to hear a little bit more of the personal side and behind the scenes, or what's really going on type episode.

So, I know many of you will enjoy this episode and where I share some fun new that are going on. So, I hope to see you on this episode. If not, I will catch you next week, where we are going to be diving into an interview with self-sufficiency and foraging with somebody from the UK. I'm actually really excited to interview this guest. We're going to be talking about self-sufficiency and some different things where we may have touched on them in previous episodes, but we haven't dove into this aspect of self-sufficiency in a while. So, I'm actually really excited for that episode. So, good things are coming both in this current episode as a well as the one that I will have available for you next week.

Hey, Pioneers, welcome to episode number 340. Today's episode, we are going to be doing some catch up. It has been a hot minute since I have been here with you on the podcast without a guest. Going to be letting you know some things that we are changing and doing here on our homestead, as well as some of the thought processes that we're using to make some of these decisions, and how you can use that as you think about and prepare for the upcoming months. So, this'll just be, we are friends who are sitting down and chit chatting, and having a visit. Whew. So, it has been one of the busiest times, I think ever here on our homestead, which has been really interesting. And there's some that I can talk to you about now, like some things that I can share with you now that I'm very excited about, and then there's some stuff that I can't give you the full details yet.

So, one of the first things that I can share with you about that I'm actually very excited about, I am horrible at keeping secrets. Like if you tell me something in confidence, it is kept in confidence. And if I'm told, I can't tell anything until a certain time, I will do so, but I tell you what, it's very hard because I just love to share all the things, especially fun, exciting things. So, first thing is, the time of this recording I think it was actually three weeks ago. I did a full on three day. I'm talking from 7:45 in the morning until like 5:00 or 6:00 at night photo shoot for a brand new book. Now I am so excited about this book for number of reasons, but the way that this all aligns together, oh, there's been so much happening behind the scenes that I haven't been able to share with you guys yet.

So, this new book is going to be a preserving book. And so we took all of the photos for the book three weeks ago, but the book won't actually be released until this fall or end of summer. But this is not your average preserving book. This is a book that is going to have not just canning, not just freezing or fermenting, but all of the ways that you can preserve, produce and meat, so vegetables, fruit, and then we're also including meat in that at home. But what makes it unique is this is basically the book that I want and I wanted to create this resource for myself. And I'm sure if I want it, that there's other people that need this information as well. When you are in the full on harvest season, when things are coming in out of the garden or you're buying them even at the grocery store or farmer's markets, I want to resource where I can open up the book, go in alphabetical order and my finger lands on green beans.

And then that will tell me, under green beans, all of the ways that I can safely preserve that item at home. Because this is a surprise to people who are coming into home food preservation oftentimes, you actually can't safely can all types of produce at home. There are some things that don't lend themselves well to fermenting or they don't do so well when they are dehydrated or whatever. Not every fruit and vegetable is safe or lends itself way to every single type of food preservation. And especially when it comes to canning and safety. I am a canner that does so by the science, which is really the only way you should be canning is to do it by the science, so that we can make sure that we are avoiding botulism. That is a whole nother episode and I have plenty of them on home food preservation, safety, and especially canning science safety. But back to this at hand.

So, you go in alphabetical order, you land on what it is. You've got 10, 20 pounds of sitting on the counter and it tells you, these are all of the ways that you can safely preserve this item at home. And then it gives you either and, or recipes and tutorials so that you can do that, as well as letting you know, if you have a 10 pounds of tomatoes, how many quarts, or how many pints does that equal, or how much sauce can you expect to get from that. My goal is to make it super user friendly when we are busy and we don't have time. And so there is no resource that I'm aware of that is all encompassing like this, and I am so excited because it's something that I have wanted myself and have a need of, especially as we ramp up and do even more growing and home food preservation each year than we have the year before. Especially as we look at this upcoming spring and summer.

At the time of this recording, it is almost April 1st, 2022. And with gas prices rising and reports of food shortages, who knows? I am not a doom and gloom, or panic, fearful type person, but I do believe in looking at the signs or what's going on and based upon that making realistic choices. And for us looking at the increase of gas prices where they are right now, that is going to affect the cost of goods. It has to. There's no way that you can pay the increase in fuel and shipping fees, and not pass that onto the consumer. And then there was drought issues last year, and then because of the fuel prices, as well as seed costs, there already is increase in livestock feed $200 more, I wanted to say per ton, on grain. I actually have friends who are very large hay farmers in Idaho, and they have already told me that feed costs for hay expect to be at least double, if not triple this year and even less hay available.

Now, this isn't meant to be like scare tactics. I don't sell feeds, so that wouldn't really do any benefit anyways. But we are looking at that. Knowing that those are possibilities, what is it that we can do to mitigate that if it does in fact end up being true and happening, and therefore impacts the cost of food even more? You see where this is going, right? So, my husband and I have been talking about this. Like I said, we've heard this from multiple sources that we personally know. Literally from the horse's mouth, not just what you would see on social media, or news sites or whatnot. So, armed with that information, we are putting in even a larger garden this year, and I'm also looking at crops and trying out some new varieties of crops that could feed our livestock if we need it to, or could help supplement at the very least.

So, looking at doing some different winter squash that is very prolific, grows really large so that we can supplement that for the cows, if we need to, and, or the chickens. We're not doing pigs this year. So, that's not something that we'll be feeding, because we had so much meat in the freezer that we decided not to do the pigs. But it will be able to help us supplement with some of the other livestock needs if we need that to happen. Also I will be having some YouTube videos coming out on this. I actually just recorded a bunch of them today, but on long term food storage, as well as livestock feed, where to get it, how much, how to store it, that type of thing.

So, if you're not subscribed to the YouTube channel, you definitely want to check that out. And I may be recording some more episodes kind of niching down into some of the topics that I'm kind of going over today, more in like, this is what we're doing and evaluating. They may become future podcast episodes. So, if I'm mentioning things where you're like, yes, please talk more about that or go into more detail. Please do let me know. You can do it in a review on Apple Podcast, you can shoot me an email message, but I do love to hear from you, my podcast listeners. So, if there's things that you would love to hear discussed or talked about more on the podcast, fill me in and I will do my best to meet that. So, that's been some of the stuff that in a roundabout way goes back to why I am writing this preserving book, and I feel like it is an even bigger need than ever before.

And there will be, as soon as we get it, I don't even have a title yet. We're going back and forth on titles. But as soon as we have a title and have it available for pre-order, I will be letting you guys know the minute that happens, because with the time of taking things to print and all of that before we can actually get the physical paper back copy released and launched, I know a lot of us want this information even sooner. So, we'll be looking at some pretty awesome pre-order bonuses. So, you'll be able to get your hands on this info, at least in digital format while we are waiting and getting the print edition done. So, I'll make announcements on that just as soon as I have that information. But this leads me full circle to working on projects and things that have been going on behind the scenes.

And one of them, if you've listened to the podcast at all before, you probably know that ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a published author. As soon as I found out that was actually something somebody could do for a living and a career, I knew I wanted to be a writer. So, I have four books out already. And I was offered the opportunity to be the editor for a brand new magazine, and it is Homestead Living Magazine. It is a quarterly digital magazine right now, meaning each season it comes out. But the amazing news is because it's brand new, it will be a print edition hopefully by next winter. So, right now we just released the very first spring edition. And because this is a self-funded brand new publication, as soon as we are able to raise enough funds with the digital part, we will be moving it to print.

What is really exciting about this is one, as I said, my heart has always been in writing and publishing. I mean, books have changed my life as a child. I was a voracious reader. There are characters and books that felt like best friends. I have been influenced in the best of ways by books. And so I was very excited because you have those moments when you look back on your life, and you can see where God was leading things every step of the way, and you couldn't see it at the time. But you get those rare moments where you feel like, I feel like the curtain was parted and I was able to look and I could see how he had woven all of these together in my life up until this point. And it was to this, I just didn't know it was coming.

So, the Homestead Living Magazine is amazing, because it is written by homesteaders. This is not like where we have staff writers who are just going and researching, and just writing things on topics. This is by people who have been doing and living this lifestyle for years, if not decades. Joel Salatin is one of our columnists. Carolyn Thomas from Homesteading Family, Lisa Bass from Farmhouse on Boone, Amy Fewell from Homesteaders of America and the Fewell Homestead. Just so many. And what has really amazing is to see the articles and breaks from Anne of All Trades. I don't want to leave anybody out. So, many I'm excited for for this first edition. And then each edition after that, we will have more and more and different homesteaders writing. But what's so exciting is we are able to aggregate the wisdom from all of these people in different subjects, but under the Homestead Living and then share that.

And the reason that's so special is, my husband and I were just talking this past week about how much has been lost. I don't even think we know how much has been lost in the past 100 years, because back in the day, you had the majority of families living on a farm and raising food together. And so not only did you have the older generation teaching the young kids what they had known and them watching everything. I mean, if you have done anything for a long period of time, you figure out intuitively these little tricks and these little things that really make a big difference that you never would've known if you hadn't been doing it for years, days, months on end. And so if you pass that on, where it's taken you say a lifetime to learn all of these things, and you're able to give that lifetime knowledge to somebody as a child just starting out, then they take that lifetime's knowledge and they build upon that.

Whereas for the most part now, we don't have that anymore, not in that immersive type of way. And so you have where someone like myself like, I knew that about growing and seed saving green beans. But there was so much else that I didn't get to learn that from my dad, because he was working an outside day job at that point, even though he grew up as parents do that. And so I feel like you have this aggregation of so much wisdom that was lost in just the past 100 years. And fortunately, there's so much renewal within wanting to learn these traditional skill sets and people returning to them. And there have been people who have been living this lifestyle, obviously, but not in the way where you're learning from them and then building up on that like it was in the past.

But by having a publication like this, where we are learning from people who have been doing this for a very long time, we are able to begin to bring that back. Because not only are you and I, I'm getting to learn from the authors and the articles in the Homestead Living Magazine, but then as I implement them into my life, my kids will be able to learn upon them and then pass them back down to their kids. We're bridging that gap as we bring these back and preserve of this wisdom for now, but also for the future. And so I'm so excited to be a part of the Homestead Living Magazine, and it's just an incredible honor. And reading the responses from those of you who have already purchased the magazine, oh my goodness.

So, I had a message that said, "All I did was read the letter from the editor and I'm already in tears, and I can't wait to read the rest of it." And that was just the letter from the editor, which I did write. I am the editor. But I was so excited because I'm like, oh my goodness, that is what I was hoping this would be. When I read the articles and read the magazine, that's how I felt, but I am so excited to see that's translating. So, please go to homesteadliving.com/melissa homestead, living.com/melissa, and you will see the spring edition of the magazine. And also, if you decide to get the annual, you will get over 30% off. And we price this as low as we possibly could, because we really want to get this information into everybody's hands, but also be able to raise enough funds to be able to make this a print option very soon.

So, that is round circle how doing my new book and then the publication of the Homestead Living Magazine and being the editor for that has been a lot that I've been working on, and started working on actually in the fall, but just wasn't able to share with you guys. Then two days after that, I kid you not, Josh and Carolyn Thomas from Homesteading Family came for the first time to my homestead. Actually, Carolyn is my best friend and we have been in person many, many times at different events and different things that we've done, but I've actually never been to Carolyn's homestead and she has never been to mine until last week, which was just following the photo shoot. I had a two day break, and then they were here and we were working on a very special project that I am not at liberty to tell you anymore than that about right now, but that is going to be also coming this fall.

But it is going to be amazing. There are so many things that are half in the homesteading world for this community that, oh my gosh, I am so excited. No good things are coming. Then the other thing that is exciting and news, and definitely making some changes here on our homestead is we are getting a dairy cow. Yes. I said it. If you heard me on Lisa's podcast from the Simple Farmhouse Podcast, Farmhouse on Boone Lisa Bass, then you heard me tell this, but we're getting a dairy cow. And honestly, I did not think we would be getting a dairy cow right now. They really had no plans for this to happen this soon, but sometimes things just fall into place. And I really am not a believer in coincidence. I believe that when things happen that we think are coincidence, I think that is the hand of God.

Now, as a Christian that's my belief. So, here's the story on how we are getting a dairy cow. Our local dairy that we were able to get, it wasn't raw milk, but it was grass fed, organic, non homogenized in the glass bottle, that pasteurized, which means slower pasteurization. It's not ultra high heat, even though it wasn't raw milk. I went to take my glass bottles back to the store where I get it and they said, "Oh, it's a good thing you brought the bottles back. We weren't going to be taking them after tomorrow." And like, "Are you not carrying their milk anymore?" Because I've gotten it there for years. And they're like, "No, they went out of business. They're not selling their milk anymore." And I was like, what? Totally shocked. It was abrupt as far as I know.

And I'm like, oh my goodness. So, I make a lot of our own cheese, a lot of our ferments and I don't like to use regular conventional milk from the store. And so I came home and I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do. There is some raw milk options, but I have to drive a long ways to get them and it's just not conceivable for me to do that every week in order to get us milk. So, I went on social media locally and asked if anybody knew of any local sources where I could get good raw milk, even if it was not from a large dairy, but just a backyard farm. So, I had someone say, "Yes, I know someone that you can get it from. They just operate for just themselves and just neighbors type of a deal."

Hopefully you get where I'm going with this and read between the lines. So, I said, "Yes, I would be thrilled. I would be thrilled if I could get milk from them and do that." So, I started getting milk from them. Great, raw milk. Loved it. Glass bottles. Would show up and grab it, love it. And had gotten to do so for about three weeks. And I told my husband like, "Oh my goodness, this is so wonderful. Like, I hope that they don't ever stop. I don't know what I'll do if they decide to stop milking and I can't get milk from them. I can't go back to store about after this." And he said, "Well, why don't you ask them if they ever come across another milk cow that's already trained in that, and maybe they'll come across something and then we could get one at that point."

You guys, my jaw just about hit the floor, because he has never said that. And honestly, I have never really pushed for it either, because I worked a day job until just a few years ago. And with that, there was really no way that I felt that we could do a dairy cow with everything else that we were already doing. And I just wasn't ready to take on that commitment level. So, when he said that, I'm like, oh my goodness, he's serious. I'm not joking. I had my phone on silent, but at that exact moment that he said that, I didn't know it until an hour later, I'm looking at the timestamp. But the people that we got our milk from sent me a text and said, "Would you be interested in taking the milk cow? We're thinking of selling her."

And I'm like, what? And so I showed it to my husband and he's like, "Text her back and say yes." It happened so fast. I'm like, okay. So, I texted her back and went and actually milked the cow, met the cow, talked to them more in depth, and we are bringing her home, if everything goes to plan, this weekend. And there was just so many other things that fell into place with this cow that I'm like, God wants us to get this milk cow. Now, I have no idea why. Part of me is still honestly a little bit nervous, because I'm like, this is every single day. This is a commitment. We have so much else going on and I have so much else on my plate that I'm a little nervous, but at the same time, both of us feel this strong.

We don't even know really how to put into words, but both of us have talked about it and we just felt a strong impression that we are supposed to get this milk cow and we're supposed to do it now. I don't necessarily know why, but we both feel that God is putting it on our hearts, that this is what we're supposed to do. So, Clover is a Jersey, and Clover will be coming to her... We're building a milk stanchion area right now, because we didn't have anywhere to milk her. And she will be coming to our homestead this Sunday, actually. So, that is very exciting, but it's also been very interesting. I kind of felt a little bit hesitant to talk about this, but I've talked about it in private with quite a few different people who are homesteaders.

And what's been interesting is all of us are feeling this very strong impression. Now, if you're a Christian, most Christians would say from the Holy spirit or from God. If you're not, I don't know what you would attribute it to. But that we are supposed to be putting up food and becoming more self-sufficient, and this is going to almost sound like an oxymoron. more self-sufficient but also more of a community, which almost seems the opposite. But within the homestead community, like supporting one another and offering things to the community at large and also online within the homestead community, and getting ourselves ready. Now, ready for what? I don't know. I mean, I'm not trying to say I have this special insight or something like that, or that something really bad is coming and we're getting ready for that.

But I find it very interesting that so many of us in this realm, and even those who aren't necessarily homesteading. But so many people are feeling called to grow more of their own food, put up more of their own food, learn these traditional skill sets and to get these things in place. So, for us, that includes getting a milk cow and we also are doing more in the garden this year than even last year and the year before that. But it also means that we are opening up our homestead this year and we're going to be doing more live workshops. As soon as I get the actual shipping confirmation for the meat birds, we will be having our first chicken butchering workshop listed. So, there will be the tickets available for that. And then we plan on doing a preserving workshop here on our homestead, as well as a medicinal herb workshop as well.

And we may put some more in, but those are the three that we plan on doing this year. They will be this spring and summer. So, you can go to melissaknorris.com/liveworkshop, melissaknorris.com/liveworkshop. And if we don't have them listed yet, then you will be able to pop in your email to get on the wait list. So, as soon as we have those exact dates, we can send them out in spots and you can get your place reserved. But if we have them live, then you'll actually be able to see which ones, the it's listed and as long as there are spots still available, you'll be able to grab them. So, if you have any interest in those, go to melissaknorris.com/liveworkshop and you'll be able to get the details at that point. So, we're really excited about being able to offer that and the way things are moving, but it was interesting as we move into the first of the week.

So, if you've been a long time listener, you know that I always wrap up the podcast or at least most of the podcasts with the verse of the week. And this is obviously been just a much more personal episode where I'm just kind of sharing things that are going on and what we're doing. I'm trying to think this was two or three weeks ago now, where I was pulling up the majority of the portion of our potato harvest. Because I use a root cellaring system where I'm in the ground and I over winter our potatoes in the ground, and it has worked extremely well for us. But as daytime temperatures begin to warm up in the spring, I have to get an out of the ground because once we have daytime air temps that are in the sixties and even the high fifties for a couple of weeks, it tends to get too warm and then I need to pull them out one, so that I can replant.

They can become my seed potatoes, but then whatever we haven't eaten, then I'm will be preserving in another form, or we'll just be eating them fresh depending upon how much are left. So, I had dug up, oh my goodness, I should have weighed them and I didn't. But it was like a laundry basket size full of potatoes, a lot of potatoes. And so I was cleaning them all because I was doing up a two large stock pots. My two largest stock pot on the stove and I made a big, huge double batch. Actually it wasn't a double batch because of the size of these stock pots, way more than double, but mashed potatoes. So, I cooked them and made mashed potatoes, and just enough milk in order to mash them up.

I didn't add in any butter and I added salt, and then I freeze dried them. And then I took that after I freeze dried it, and pulsed it in the food processor to make my own homemade instant mashed potatoes was what I was doing, but with our freeze dryer and our homegrown potatoes. So, I had to scrub, of course, all of the potatoes before I could cook them, because I'm freeze drying, I can leave peels on. If you're canning potatoes, you don't leave the peels on because it's a higher bacterial load and chance of botulism. So, you remove the peels if you're canning them. But freeze drying is different, so I didn't have to. And it was at the end of a really long day, I think it was right before we started the photo shoot and so I had been making sure the house was really picked up and everything was in order and ready to go.

Because I knew we would be doing like 12 plus hour days when that happened, and I needed to get those potatoes done and out of the way. So, I went and dug them all up outside and then brought them in, and was scrubbing all of them and then getting ready to actually make this huge amount of mashed potatoes. And I'll be honest. It was the end of the day. I'd already dug them all up and done a full day's work and I was tired. My upper back was tired. I'd already dug and stood there and scrubbed all these potatoes, and I still had more to go and then actually had to make the mashed potatoes. And so I was tired. And when you're tired, that's it. I'm kind of like, why am I going through all of this work?I literally can buy potatoes from the store. I can even buy instant mashed potatoes from the store, and I can get them from Costco at price that I can afford.

Now, they're not organic, but I could buy them. And so I don't know if you've ever had those feelings. I think if you've preserved food for a long period of time, that we all have had those moments, or you may have thought that, especially if you are tired. But it's always a fleeting thought by the way. I'm always glad I do it after the fact. But in the moment, that's kind of what I was thinking. And I felt not an audible voice from God, but I felt in my spirit, soul, mind, however you want to describe that, the Bible verse from the story of Joseph, if you're not familiar with that. But the Bible verse of Joseph in Genesis 4:1, where he is interpreting the dream from Pharaoh and it says that the seven good cows are seven years, and the seven good heads of grain are seven years.

And it's talking about a dream that Pharaoh had, and it was how God spoke through Pharaoh to Joseph, that they had seven years of abundance in Egypt, but then seven years of famine would follow. And so Joseph took the seven years of abundance and put aside so much of the harvest each year so that they would have enough food, and seed, and grain, et cetera, to get them through the seven years of severe famine. Now, could that have been my mind just pulling that verse out? Some people would argue. Yeah, it could have, but I don't think that was the case. I think that God brought that to mind for a reason. Now, was it to just give me enough get up and go to get through that session and the rest of the work I needed to do in order to preserve those potatoes? Very possibly.

Does it mean that I think seven years of famine are coming? No, it doesn't mean that. That Bible verse and that interpretation of that dream was definitely for that specific time. That happened way back thousands of years ago on the Old Testament, but I can't help but feel that there is a reason that we're all feeling pulled to put up more of our own food. And like I said, I'm not making any type of prediction because I don't have one to make, but I feel like there's a reason and there's an impression upon us that we are to learn how to do more for ourselves and it is so revolves around our own food production, or putting food up and having a food storage in place. Anyways, so take that for what you will. I'm still kind of molding it over and praying about it.

And I'm not living life in panic because one, we don't need to do that. God will take care of us, but we do need to just take everything in prayer and trust that he has us. And that if he's leading us in a direction that it's for a reason and he knows what the reason is, I don't necessarily need to know it, but also to just test things with prayer and against the word of God. Anyways, we are entering into just personally where my husband and I both are feeling that feeling that God is calling us to teach others even more so, but also to put things up and to get systems in place within our own homestead even more so than before. So, I just share that with you because it's what's going on. It's what we're thinking about. It's what we're doing. And I think it's important that we talk about these things.

Like I said, not from a place of like panic and fear and all of that, but if a lot of us are feeling this way, then I just think it's important that we communicate about it. So, I'm sharing that with you and I hope that you have a fabulous week and thank you for sticking with me. Took a couple weeks off of podcasting just to get through the new launch of the Pioneering Today Academy and all of our new members, and we're actually getting ready to go through a big preparedness challenge inside the academy. So, I'm super excited as we're working on that. It's going to be week by week by week, so that it doesn't feel overwhelming and is done in an easy way to make sure that we're all where we want to be by fall, and helping people get there and making sure it's customized for their homestead and their home and where they're at right now.

So, if you missed the opening of the Pioneering Today Academy, you can get on the wait list for the next time that we open back up at melissaknorris.com/pta. So, you can go and check that out. If you are a member, oh my goodness, this is going to be one of our best member challenges ever. Really excited. We'll be starting that in just a couple of weeks. So, thank you for hanging out with me today. I will be back here with you next week with more of our regular episodes and have a lot of great guests that are coming on. Very excited to share with you guys. So, thank you so much and blessings and Mason jars for now.