A Farmish Kind of Life

Audio replay from the Farmish Friday morning 4-1-22 livestream. Topics include burritos, ma nature's tricks, and gardening tips.

Today's interview is with Nate and Erin from Two Chicks Homestead, and we talk about getting started in ham radio. We discuss equipment, testing, licenses, challenges, and neat things you can do if you decide to dive in to the world of ham radio.

I recently received a bunch of questions about raising chickens. Here are my answers, two cents worth of advice, and some disclaimers about keeping chickens on your homestead.

Audio replay from the Farmish Friday morning 3-25-22 livestream. Topics include blue hair, the gym, and eating real food.

Audio replay from 3-22-22 livestream with Nicole Sauce, John Willis, and myself. We talk about many things—everything from dealing with jerks to raising and growing your own food.

In today's interview episode, Brian Wells from The Homestead Journey Podcast gets fired up and gives a whole buck fifty's worth of thoughts regarding what makes someone a "real homesteader". He also reminds us to not let great get in the way of good enough.

We're all a bunch of Judgey McJudgey Pants. Don't think so? Take a listen to your inner dialogue, and then ask yourself these two important questions.

Audio replay from a livestream with Nicole Sauce of Living Free in Tennessee. We talk about the things that are bothering us with the world today: entitlement, the media, laziness. Be aware, there is plenty of profanity in this episode.

Audio replay from the Farmish Friday morning 3-18-22 livestream. Topics include Aldi, date nights, garden plans, and Amy's next hair color.

What does it take to be successful in your goals? Today Tim Cook and I talk about hard work, support systems, and the fallacy of the overnight success.

Does the chaos of the world have you feeling like you need to raise alllll the animals on your farm? Here are nine things to consider before you add any (more) animals to the homestead.

Audio replay from the Farmish Friday morning 3-11-22 livestream. Topics include the tool box fallacy, prepping, grilled cheese, songs you sing to your dog, and hydroponic lettuce.

Today I chat with Kerry Brown of Strong Root Resources about community -- not only how to build a good one, but also why it's important in reaching your goals.

Some folks don't want to share what they're doing on their homestead because they don't want to make themselves a target if the SHTF. My thoughts? Here they are.

Today’s conversation is with Jessica of Back to Roots Farm, and we talk about all the expectations that go out the window when we decide to live the homesteading life.

You want to share about the cool things you're doing on your homestead, but you're afraid some folks think you're just showing off. Yeah, about that...

Today I talk with Brian from The LOTS Project about his experience being a vendor at several farmers markets. He shares tips and things you should consider before you decide to sell your homegrown/homemade goods at a farmers market.

There is a certain stigma that comes with having to deal with rats, but rats can be a common issue on a farm. Today I'm going to talk about our recent experience dealing with rats—what's worked, what hasn't, and where to go from here.

Today’s conversation is with Nate and Erin Lamaster of Two Chicks Homestead, and we’re talking about raising meat rabbits! Hear about Nate and Erin’s set-up, what they’ve learned along the way, as well as tips you should know if you’re thinking of raising rabbits for meat.

The things you want to do have to be more important than the things you want to complain about. Memes won’t feed the chickens, and complaints won’t pay the mortgage. Let's find a group of "do-ers" online and in real life… and do something else.

Country life is amazing, but it's also... different! Today I talk to Tom and Julie from Small Scale Life about their journey from being city mice to country mice, and all the things they've discovered and learned so far.

If you're out in the world dealing with all the crazy, you need a place where you can go to just be, to breathe, to know it’s going to be okay. But how many people don’t have that? And do you think that maybe feeds into the chaos of the world?

Today’s conversation is with Lettie from the Liberty All Day podcast and we talk about choosing to follow a "different path" and the negativity that you will sometimes experience because of that.

Today we wade into some deep, tangled muck regarding content creation, content consumption, what to do when platforms make you mad, how free content has really changed us as creators/consumers, and how to support content creators best. Make sure to bring milk, this one gets spicy.

We are 25 days into the new year. Remember those goals you made? Today’s podcast episode (181) and blog post talks about what happens when you gain new information regarding your plans. Do you change your goals to fit your life or change your life to fit your goals?

Stepping away from the crowd? Want to do things differently? Be careful. Today I talk about two traps people can often fall into along the way to living a life that's more free.

Today we take a look at the realities of working from home: the pros, the cons, and the tips that make working from home... work better.

If you live in a house, it's bound to get messy. Here's my list of 30 focused, manageable tasks to get your house on the road to organization.

Today I talk about the two focus words I've chosen for 2022 and why I chose them. To make a long story short, it's time to get out of my own way.

I'm celebrating ten years of being on our farm by talking about ten(ish) things I've learned from a decade of farm life.

There is a difference between anger that gets things done, and anger that just spins our wheels. What are you doing with your anger?

Ready for some hard hitting truth? We choose the majority of the problems we will deal with. Let's talk personal responsibility and the pros and cons of every choice we make.

Embrace the line between hope for the future and the reality of current times, and show others that walking that line is possible.

There is a difference between relying on each other and relying on Them. I believe healing and progress will take place in our country when there is more of the first and far less of the second, but in order to have less of the second, we have some uncomfortable questions to answer. I think this is important to talk about because as the world is going through these challenging times and shifting into whatever is coming next, I hear so many people say, “Screw it. I’m just gonna lock my door and be a hermit.” or “I’m gonna move to the woods and be all by myself because I don’t need anyone else.” And so they shut themselves off from the benefits of community, sometimes because of a misguided belief that we're not supposed to have to depend on anyone. But here's the thing. There's a difference between learning to rely on each other and learning to rely on Them. Relying on people with a face and a name you know—someone you could invite over for coffee—in a relationship that's an agreed upon, two way street is completely different than relying on Them, the government or giant corporations/systems. Each other vs. Them Surviving and thriving because you depended on each other was normal way back in the day, and is even pretty common in some communities still. (I'm looking at you, Yoder.) Community and depending on each other used to be the name of the game. If it was 1800 whatever and you were on the prairie, would you give a rat’s ass or probably even know what the government was up to on a daily basis? But I bet they knew what Mr. So and So was up to down the way. They had to. Mr. So and So and Mrs. Whoever and your family were the only ones for miles. You had each other. You didn’t have Them. Community is give and take. Community is I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine. Community is I’ll help you finish siding your house if you butcher and process my deer this year. It’s bartering. It’s helping each other. It’s following through on your end of the agreement. It’s offering help in ways that you can and knowing other people will help you out when you need it. I don’t feel that with government. I don’t feel that with the public school system or the medical system or the corporate food system. That’s not community. That’s Them. And yet there's a lot of people relying on those things. And when that system starts to break down—as it currently is—we have a lot of struggle and chaos. Because people have been relying on Them, not each other. This is important to talk about I hear people in the survival community sometimes spout off the importance of being able to care for yourself because ain’t nobody coming to help you. And while I agree with that, I think some people misconstrue what they’re saying. The way I see it, they’re saying learn to take care of yourselves because They aren’t coming to help you. But you’d better believe that someone is coming to help you. Your community will help each other, right? You’ve seen this happen in times of struggle, right? Gosh, I hope so. If not, you need to build that community. I also think it’s important to talk about because there are people out there who won’t accept help from others because they’ve learned that relying on others is weak. Or that you’re taking a handout. Or that you should be able to fend for yourself. And I think they’ve learned that because of watching others take from the system and everything that comes from that. Some uncomfortable truths Now, I want to point out here that I think it’s great that there are food banks and soup kitchens and places for people to get clothing and there are shelters for people who need it. I’m not against assistance. I just know that some forms of assistance are horribly abused by some people. And I think it’s harder to abuse that assistance when it’s not done on a large scale by Them. But, and this is a huge but, if we’re going to be a people who talk about how it’s not the government's job...

When talking about the state of the world, it’s common to hear people say, “well, when things go back to normal...” but is that what we really want? In today’s podcast episode/blog post I explain why I don’t think things will ever go back to normal, why I don’t think we should go back to normal, and what is a better option.

Thoughts today on why it's important to know your neighbors and build an in person community -- and how the internet has made that entire process more complicated (and not for reasons you think.)

The path I talk about will mean different things to different people. But hopefully this will be helpful to anyone who listens/reads these words.

See, the thing that always gets me is this: in a world where everyone is busy, where everyone has so much to do, people took time out of their busy lives to help us with ours.

Don't let the concept of prepping freak you out. Prepping is just keeping extra supplies on hand. That's all it is.

Before you get too excited about how you’ll take on an apocalyptic collapse of society like a boss, let’s be honest. When put in a situation you’ve never actually been in before, you don’t know *how* you or anyone else will react to or deal with that situation. People both excel and struggle differently—and that is magnified when dealing with stress.

Okay, I’m going to say it. Ego is a problem in some homesteading and prepping communities and it needs to stop.

Online communities are great, but we need to remember the importance of in person, local communities. Let's bring them back!

There are no sick days on a farm, so how do you deal with homestead work when you can barely get out of bed?

Six reasons why it's more important than ever to take care of yourself—hint: look at current events—and three ways to do it.

Wherein Amy goes off about “my body, my choice”, medical freedom, Karens, people who get off on being angry, and who is going to take the guns.

Thoughts on employee shortages and the "nobody wants to work" argument. Folks, it's a much more complicated discussion than that.

Honest talk about growing and raising your own food, as well as a caution to the homesteading community about pride.

Today I've got two random lessons that I've learned on the homestead lately that I thought maybe you could learn something from, too. One was brought on by a ridiculous task I've taken on in my office—one that was supposed to be easy. The other is something I learned while checking out my struggling garden.

Stages of life affect stages of homesteading and we sometimes forget to think about that as we look into the future—at least I know I have. This has been on my mind a lot lately as we have reached a point at our house where there are a lot of changes that I didn't realize would affect our homesteading so much. There are many stages to homesteading What happens when you were a childless homesteader and now you have twin babies and you’re freaking out because what you used to just walk outside and take care of you can’t just walk outside and take care of anymore? Changes, my friends. What happens when your kids grow up and get jobs of their own, and your big butcher day that used to be "easy" isn't easy anymore because everyone is busy and schedules are complicated? So many changes. What if you are super involved in something outside of your farm life, and that something suddenly dictates what animals you can handle on your farm, or what month those animals can arrive at your farm (which ultimately changes other things in your schedule, like when they are butchered)? All. the. changes. Some of them are temporary, and some are permanent. The point is that your life will change, and you will also change as a homesteader. What you can physically handle changes I’m healthy and I’m physical but I’m gonna tell you what, sometimes I’m gonna use that side by side ranger to do a job that I would have walked across the farm to do before. Because I’m not 30 anymore and sometimes it’s just nice to get a break. I hear my dad talk about this, about wishing he could do the things that he could do when he was younger and how it frustrates him. Sometimes there are things that take you longer, wear you out more. Sometimes there are things you have to ask for help with that you used to do alone in half the time. Sometimes there are things you just have to admit you can't do anymore, or shouldn't do anymore, or have to really modify the way you do them. And all of that affects your life as a homesteader. The way you start isn't necessarily the way you continue The way you start your farmish life is not necessarily the way you continue your farmish life. The animals you have, the size of the garden, the things you take on will differ. There are things that will become easier… but you might exchange them for other difficulties or challenges. For instance, you've got to figure out how to modify all that cooking and baking you used to do and how much you have to make. The way I cook and bake has started to change because I never know who is going to be here or if they will have eaten before they come home. Will my husband and I continue to raise as many pigs, chickens, and ducks after our kids are out of the house or will we cut our numbers? Will we continue to raise the same amount to provide for our family (even though they don't live in the same house) but then ask someone else to process for us because the job will get too big to do alone and too complicated to find help for? I don't think we will know until we get to that stage of homesteading. Kids getting older of moving out certainly frees up certain things for you, but you also lose some of the help you had (or the convenience of help you had). Kind of like the funny meme I saw the other day that said I thought sending my kids to summer camp would be a break for me—until I realized I had to do all their chores while they were gone. Then again some people actually grow their farm after their kids get older or move out because they aren’t running their kids here there and everywhere and they are able to be home more. Another stage: when homesteading isn't a "thing" anymore What happens when homesteading isn’t a “thing” anymore, it’s just something you do? I feel like some people identify as homesteaders. If there was a flag for homesteaders, they would fly it proudly. It would be imposed on their profile picture on social media.

When we first moved to our farm in 2011, the one animal that I insisted we get was goats. We started with two male goats (Willy and Waylon) and then added three female goats (Luna, Pickles, and Olive.) Then we bred the gals and got babies. But after having goats for a few years, we ultimately decided goats weren't for us. I am often asked about why that was, so here are the reasons we no longer raise goats. And none of the reasons are even because goats are often described as "unruly toddlers" or "drunk teenagers". ;) Milking actually does control your schedule: It's one thing to know in your head that having a doe in milk means you will be milking and that you have to milk everyday at about the same time. It's another thing entirely to actually live that. You can't drop what you're doing and run off to that thing you just got invited to. You can't run super late at an event with the kids. You really have to pay attention to what you're involved in outside the farm and make sure it works with milking. No one was drinking the milk: In the beginning, milking was a "thing" and it was "cool". We had milk from our goats in the fridge. Ain't that cool? Not if no one drinks it. While my husband and I have never been huge milk drinkers, my kids were. Until they weren't. And then I had a lot of milk in my fridge. Goat milk soap sounded like a real great adventure to get into. Until I realized that likeliness of me fitting that in was similar to the likelihood of me finishing that one quilt I have in the basement... We don't make our own hay: We don't make our own hay at our farm which meant we had to buy it. And wouldn't you know it, the final year we had goats was the year hay prices went through the roof. That's fine, goat friends. Just go ahead and toss that hay all over the ground. It's fine. Really. Babies are stressful: While I've always enjoyed hatching out chicks, pheasants, and ducklings, larger livestock babies ended up being a ball of stress for me. (This was similar to the reason we stopped doing piglets and now only do feeder pigs.) Some people enjoy the "rush" and stress of kidding season. I discovered I didn't, regardless of how adorable those kids ended up to be. Selling/finding new homes for babies was a pain: Wanting milk from goats meant having babies, and having babies meant selling babies. Selling babies meant dealing with people coming to our farm. That sounded like a lot less hassle on paper than it ended up being in real life. In our search for new homes for goat kids, we dealt with all sorts of people—from multiple no-shows, to the guy who insisted you can't have a male dairy breed goat because you can't milk males, to the woman who showed up alone to take three goat kids in her car... with nowhere to put them. They'll just stay in the backseat, right? I'm more of a small farm animal/don't overwinter gal. Every homesteader is different, and you don't know what kind of homesteader you really are until you actually live the homesteading life. After being on the farm for a decade now, I've realized that smaller animals are my thing. I've also learned I'm not big on overwintering in Minnesota. We do overwinter our egg birds and our ducks, but everything else is put in the freezer before the snow flies and we start again in the spring (pigs, meat chickens, and turkeys). I'm glad we tried goats, because you really don't know if an animal works for you until you try them out! I also think it's important to realize that not every kind of farm animal is for every kind of farm—or every kind of homesteader. Good thing we have so many choices of what to raise, right? -- Amy Dingmann, 6-22-21 Find More Goodies from A Farmish Kind of Life: Videos: YouTube, Odysee, TikTok Social media: Facebook, Instagram, MeWe Podcast: here on the site or subscribe in your favorite podcast app Books by me, Amy Dingmann: My books