Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the My Catholic Homestead Podcast. We are your hosts. I'm Matthew. And I'm Carissa. We're excited for you to join us as we talk about the Catholic faith on the homestead.
Speaker: Welcome back to another episode of the My Catholic Homestead podcast. I think this is probably going to be one of the most fun episodes to date, and I'm extremely excited to talk about misconceptions about homesteading. Carissa, when you think about all the conversations you have with friends or family or others who are interested in the way that we have chosen to live our life as a Catholic homestead, do you think that there's ever some misconceptions out there that people have about what we do or why we do what we do?
Speaker: Yes, absolutely. I think that to be honest, I think a lot of people who are interested in homesteading what keeps them from making the leap into actually doing it is because the fears that they have that are actually just misconceptions.
Speaker: Yeah, I think you're right. Well, why don't we do this? Let's dive into them. We created a little list of some of the misconceptions that we're most familiar with. And certainly there's probably many others and maybe we will do a part two in the future, but let's talk through some of what we consider to be the big misconceptions about homesteading. Starting with number one, you need a lot of land.
Speaker: yeah i think that that one is just not true at all there are plenty of books out there available now on how to homestead on one acre on a quarter of an acre and there's lots of resources on what you can do and how much you can fit
Speaker: on however much land you have. We specifically have rented owned houses, lived in apartments, and we've been developing what I would consider our homestead and our homesteading skills in each living circumstance. And we've never had a lot of land until this last year.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that reminds me too of what we talked about maybe a few episodes back where we just kind of decided that at some point we were just going to start the homestead or I don't know if we mentioned that, but that was essentially it is where the idea of little way homestead came from was we're just not going to wait anymore. We're going to start exactly where we are with whatever we have access to, whether that means that you have access to just do a small raised bed garden, or maybe you have the ability to go buy some ingredients and make some sourdough bread.
Speaker: whatever it is, just get started. And that getting started portion often has a very little, if almost nothing to do with how much land you have. And I wouldn't even say you need land to increase your land throughout your life. If you are comfortable in building out inside your home, what you consider to be that homestead environment where you're very intentional in what you do in the house and how you go about eating and making food and celebrating and
Speaker: all of those different things that are sometimes associated with homesteading, then good for you. You can always go to the grocery store or your local farmer's market and buy fresh produce and then can it and preserve it for yourself throughout the winter. And that is still what I would consider homesteading. You're still learning skills on how to feed yourself and your family.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that brings us maybe to misconception number two, which is you have to live off grid. I guess real quick, before we even talk about what that misconception really entails, what is off grid?
Speaker: It typically refers to being without access to public utilities. Right. I think that's a common definition or maybe a common understanding of it, which means that your electricity doesn't come from anything that's not produced on your homestead or your farm. The water doesn't come from the city or a municipality. Yeah. The gas or propane or, you know, electric, whatever else it is, it all it all comes from where you live and it's not connected to a service provider.
Speaker: Yeah, that is an option for homesteading for any kind of life in the country, I suppose, that you would like to live, but it's absolutely not necessary. It is something that is helpful to think about what would I do if I didn't have access to these things. I think that is important for anybody, whether they're homesteading or not, to just be able to consider that question.
Speaker: But there's nothing about that that makes it necessary to homesteading. No, not at all. In fact, we're not off grid. No, we have the ability, I would say to become more off grid, but we're not even off grid here. And in some instances, it may be a little bit irresponsible to be completely off grid because if you eliminate the possibility of kind of going back and forth between on grid off grid, then you are opening up a possibility of more discomfort or problems for your family.
Speaker: Not to say that you can't be off grid or that you have to be off grid or that you can't be completely on grid. Just that it's a reasonable decision to consider whether it's worth it to you and whether it's something that you believe is a good inclusion in the development of your homestead.
Speaker: Yeah, so being off grid is simply a decision that you have the option of making. It is a bigger challenge. It can be a bigger challenge and it adds to what you're going to be learning about when you choose to homestead, but it's not at all required. Frankly, I know someone who lives in a more urban or suburban environment who's more off grid than most of the people that live around us. So it's definitely, it's an option. It's a choice. It's not a requirement. Yes.
Speaker: So then the next misconception that I think of is that homesteading is going to be all late nights and early mornings. Yes. I think that often refers to things like milking a dairy cow, that it must happen in the absolute most frigid, cold environment. Dark. You're out there with like a oil lantern, just walking in the middle of the night to milk your cow.
Speaker: I think this becomes a misconception just probably based on like popular media or just historical understandings of how the homestead often worked, which was probably because it was just more difficult and there was more labor involved just generally. However, I think that if you really get sucked into thinking that it has to follow in those environments where it is things like late nights, early mornings,
Speaker: then you're giving up a sense of control about your homestead, which isn't really appropriate at all. And in fact, I would say that if you want to milk your dairy cow in the middle of the day, then do it. That's fine. Work with her, work with your homestead, develop it the way that you want it, and you can build out a routine that works for you and your family.
Speaker: There's another misconception that falls into this category and it's that there's one way to homestead. But I think homesteading is just like any other household that you are creating. It's going to be what works and what fits for your family. So your schedule, some people might have very busy days. They might want to have their kids in extracurriculars and they have to be running around in the middle of the day during the daylight hours
Speaker: taking their kids to practices and games. And so the only time they have left to milk the cow is real early in the morning or late at night when the sun's gone down already and all the kids are in bed. But if that's not what you want for your homestead, then that's not how you have to do it.
Speaker: Yeah. And bonus misconception on the list. You don't have to have a dairy cow. Right. Exactly. But I think the big thing about this one late nights and early mornings is simply to remind you that you don't have to follow someone else's schedule or someone else's homesteading routine. You're going to have your own family's dynamic, your own carisms, and it's important to explore those and implement a plan or a schedule that works for you and your family.
Speaker: because your family is ultimately where your priority lies right after the way that you love God. I think that really kind of segues well then into the next point which is that when you're thinking of what your homestead does look like is it does not have to look like some social media influencers homestead. Social media influencers that live on homesteads create some of the most beautiful and amazing looking environments.
Speaker: but we are only seeing a snapshot of the environment and there's no telling how long or how much money they've invested into that homestead and it's their homestead not yours. Yeah I totally agree. I think that something I've heard people talk about with if you're gonna homestead it has to look like what everybody says it looks like on social media. One thing I've heard a lot of
Speaker: is women saying like well I don't want to wear the prairie dress and the apron every day and that is not at all a requirement you don't have to look like somebody else's homestead to homestead yourself similar to the schedule thing you still get to be yourself you don't have to pretend to be somebody that you're not
Speaker: just because you're changing your lifestyle. You're moving somewhere that you haven't lived before. You're still you. Your family is still your family and you get to choose what it looks like.
Speaker: Could you imagine if I just walked, if you just walked out into the middle of the farm while I'm out there working and took a video of me, it would not be very social media friendly because I'm covered in sweat and probably one of the animals, manures and dirt and mud and everything else. It's definitely not the pretty prairie girl with the frilly apron collecting eggs in her basket.
Speaker: I don't think that that's actually very realistic, which leads me to think it's probably a good reminder to everyone that social media is curated and designed and intentional often. And it is showing the best of a situation, which probably isn't even a real part of the day in that manner.
Speaker: No, it's good for inspiration, I think, and for showing the beauty of things like homesteading. But it's definitely not where you should set your goals and like, this is what my life is going to have to look like when I'm homesteading. Yeah. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're out in the fields right now picking some berries or harvesting potatoes or making bread or something else, and you look around and you think my house is disorganized. I look a mess.
Speaker: you're probably homesteading. Yeah. And that's okay. You're working and good for you. So that brings us maybe to the next one then, which is that all things considered misconception, you must be completely 100 % self -sufficient.
Speaker: This is something that arguably we have probably even struggled with the idea of. I think that there's this desire to be able to be self sufficient because there's kind of a lot of fears that have been going on around the world of like the systems that we're used to might not be able to support us the way that we thought they could.
Speaker: And so in order to feel in control and like things aren't going to fall out from underneath of us, people have this desire now like, okay, I have to be able to do it all myself. And the truth is in some circumstances, you might be able to be mostly self -sufficient, but I think community is a huge benefit and aspect to homesteading. The reality is you're not always going to be able to grow everything you need on your land.
Speaker: You're not always going to be able to raise every animal that you want or need to eat on your land. And it just lightens the burden to be able to carry alongside your neighbor for them to be able to raise pigs and you raise chicken and you trade or you sell to each other. And now you have one less thing to do and they have one less thing to do, but now you're working together, you're building community and you're lightening the load for everybody.
Speaker: Yeah that's a great point too because it also allows each neighbor or each participant in the community to become really good at one thing instead of everybody having to become decent at everything. Right I think that is a conversation we've had a lot since we've been out on land and we have the opportunity to
Speaker: do a lot more than we have before. The idea of doing everything just means that it takes more, it fills our plate more and we have less time and less energy to put into really getting to understand each enterprise in depth.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's a really good point as well just to call out that the communal aspect of that is this awareness that you don't have to do it all yourself. And if you're not doing it all yourself, then that is basically defeating the idea of self -sufficiency. I think people get the idea that a homestead is self -sufficient because maybe many of the people that they know who do homestead and maybe do so in a more agrarian way
Speaker: do so by trying to do a lot of things. And maybe it's because those people don't have community or don't have a lot of people around them who are like minded or interested in participating in that. So they feel compelled to do a lot of stuff and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It could be a little reactionary. It could be a little bit problematic at times, depending on how it's gone about.
Speaker: But ultimately I think the idea that you have to be self -sufficient is truly just a misconception and one that probably stems from a lack of understanding or even from popular media, frankly, and what it used to look like or what we think it looked like to live in the 1800s, 1700s, and beyond. Right. Next misconception that I hear a lot, which is that you have to live in a remote location in order to homestead. What do you think?
Speaker: Not at all. So when I think of a remote location, I think of somewhere that is so far away from your neighbor that it would be a reasonable drive to find your neighbor. Or you're probably, you know, an hour away from basic communal services. Like a grocery store, a gas station.
Speaker: gas station might arguably be a little closer to you because it's a little more necessary or maybe not though if it's remote you may be in a situation if it's remote where you have to actually fill up the gas tanks like multiple gas tanks and hold them back home yes i do notice actually out here in the country we're not remote but i do notice that gas stations become mini grocery stores because people are further from a grocery store that's a good sign of you becoming more remote maybe interesting huh
Speaker: that's funny because it goes from like that way in the city where it's also there's like grocery store aspects of it and then you kind of leave and it gets more grocery store s it's still convenience store yeah but then it goes out here where it becomes again grocery store esque yeah that's interesting
Speaker: So do you have to be remote? No, you don't have to be remote. If you are remote, I think you're definitely probably doing something that would be considered homesteading because you are so far away from other people that you basically have to. I think the more remote you become, the more naturally you homestead because it's just kind of more essential, but there's plenty of people homesteading in the suburbs and in the city.
Speaker: We live less than 15 minutes away from two pizza restaurants. Now you can't order them delivery, but that's pretty good. And I think many people would visit us here and say, yeah, you guys are definitely more rural or remote or something of that nature.
Speaker: But I guess I say that just to suggest that you can have chickens and pigs and horses and dogs and all kinds of animals and have giant gardens and be making all of your own breads and milling your own wheat and everything else. And you don't need to be in a remote environment to do that.
Speaker: Yes. I think that just to add to this point a little bit more, I think that there are some concessions that you have to make the closer you live to the city. So the more remote you become, the more control you have over what you're able to do. And the closer to the city you get the, you're obviously not going to have 50 acres, five minutes from downtown.
Speaker: not any well you might but it'd be pretty unaffordable for most people now yeah unless it's been inherited from family somehow you stumbled upon a gold mine i and if you do have 50 acres i don't know there might be some more restrictions on what you can do it with it
Speaker: Because you're in city limits, but so what I'm saying is that you might have a smaller homestead The less rural you are if you're living in the suburbs or the city You might only have half an acre you might only have two acres So you might never have a cow and that's totally fine. You can homestead without ever having a cow.
Speaker: Maybe one of the things just for people to consider is that where you choose to live, whether it's closer to a large city or more out in a rural environment is it's probably important to be aware before you buy a house or land or some other type of property.
Speaker: is that you might want to be aware of any regulations or like legal issues that could be involved where you live. That could be as simple as checking with the local township or the municipality before you buy, just to make sure that you're able to do what it is that you're hoping to do or projected to do on that land. There are some places where you have to have a certain amount of land before you're allowed to have a certain amount of animals or certain types of animals.
Speaker: For example, we keep roosters or right now we have one rooster, but we often keep more roosters here. And that's really important to us to have the ability to have roosters. There's some places where even if you have a few acres, you might not legally be allowed to have a rooster. So it's just something to consider that if you're living closer to larger municipalities, they probably have more rules because there's more people. So just be aware of those before you buy. That way you don't find yourself in a tricky situation.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's a really great point. Yeah. Well, I think that is a good position to move on to the next misconception. Really, we can kind of combine the next two because they kind of go hand in hand, which is that a homestead is often going to be cluttered, disorganized, and the land portion is going to smell bad. Or the animal portion.
Speaker: Right. So I would say that when you are in a homesteading environment, you are often going to have more things because you need more things to carry out the activities of a homestead. For example, if I go to the grocery store and I buy bread each week, I don't have need to buy the materials to make the bread. So therefore, if I buy the bread, then I won't have to have or store the materials or the tools to make the bread.
Speaker: If I make my own bread, then I have to have those tools, whatever that may be. And you can apply that to any home setting enterprise. That does not mean though that it has to be disorganized. It means that you have to be extremely intentional.
Speaker: in creating organization and a place in your home to store your tools and your materials. Yeah. Which is probably a better way of thinking of it because oftentimes I think that what happens when we think of clutter and disorganization is that we just have to put it all away. Well the problem is when you're building out enterprises on a homestead is that you have to think about the functionality of the homestead both inside the home and outside on the land.
Speaker: And if all you do is bring in more stuff, then it's just gonna get in the way. But the stuff you're bringing in has utility in your homestead because that's why you brought it in. So it's really important in order to maintain a clean and organized environment that you build out space for those things or create a method of organization to handle them. And that just requires an extraordinary degree of intentionality
Speaker: and also maybe the reframing of our minds that a home or a house is not just a place to go to sleep in, but a functional environment to carry out the duties and responsibilities of the homestead.
Speaker: yeah what you're speaking about with organization is actually arguably another homesteading skill that we have to learn that we've kind of lost we've lost sight of we haven't it hasn't been passed down as much anymore because the home had and the home the yard everything has arguably become
Speaker: more of like a museum, so to speak. It's been like you set it up for it to look pretty. It's just not functional, even like the way that a lot of people decorate anymore. It has more to do with the way that it looks than the functionality of it.
Speaker: And so this makes me think about a conversation we had with a homesteading friend about the kitchen and how the kitchen is designed now and how it used to have movable pieces in the kitchen. It didn't have fixed cabinets to all the walls. And there was just so much more functionality to what was in your kitchen. And so even us moving into this house,
Speaker: We kind of had to remodel the kitchen unexpectedly. It wasn't necessarily in the plans. And it's not by any means done or perfect at all. But a lot of thought has gone into it from both of us to try to understand what does a functional kitchen look like on a homestead.
Speaker: Can it be as like all the countertops are clean and sparkling and empty? We don't set appliances on the countertops and everything's hidden away in the cabinets. There is an adjustment or can be an adjustment to how your house looks and how your land, your property looks from what you might be used to outside of homesteading.
Speaker: Yeah, that conversation applies both inside and outside. And the other aspect of that is something that occurs often in farming environments, especially I think at least in my experience in farms that are trying to do things in a holistic or regenerative fashion.
Speaker: is that oftentimes the farms themselves become incredibly messy. And what I mean by that is bags of feed laying around, leftover tarps on the fields, materials that didn't get put away, oftentimes maybe not very good smells because of poor manure management on the farms. Yeah, or not animal rotation.
Speaker: Right. And all of those things are able to be addressed, remedied, but they do take time and they do take intentionality and they are going to take probably some financial investment in order to set up good systems. It is very easy for the homestead to get messy and disorganized and cluttered, but it doesn't have to be. And you can still have a goal of having an ordered home, a nice tidy homestead with the land looking
Speaker: tended to and everything has a place, you might have to give yourself a little patience and grace in getting to that point because it can take more time, more money, more thought and organization like you've already said.
Speaker: I also think you, we wouldn't accuse someone who's never done something of being bad at it when they try to do it on their first day or second day, or even a few weeks in, it's going to take continued effort and learning and development. And you're probably going to do things the way I did. I went out and I did something and then we carried out an enterprise through that for a certain time. And then at the end of that, I thought.
Speaker: Yeah, this was a terrible way of doing this and it was horrible and I suffered a lot through it. So I'm just not going to do that again. A perfect example is the way that we first raised our commercial meat chickens. So I say commercial for our farm was we raised them in chicken tractors.
Speaker: which is a very normal and conventional way of doing it on a homestead. The problem is they're really heavy and it's very time consuming and it opens up the possibility of a lot of accidents and injuries to the birds when you're moving home. So this round we're creating systems to allow the birds to free range and that seems to be better for the environment and it seems to be very good for them and also just a really easy hassle free way of doing things.
Speaker: but it did require some changes. Like we have to have a guardian dog in order to do that. That way it keeps them safe. So I say that just that you're going to go out often and you're going to start with something, but it's possible that you're going to change that over time and your farm or your homestead is going to look different because of that. And that is totally fine. So be patient with yourself.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree. I think that the next misconception that people have about homesteading is that you're going to be lonely. You're not going to have community. You're not going to have friends around you. Your kids might grow up isolated and unprepared for the real world.
Speaker: Yeah, that is all actually not a misconception if that's the way you raise your homestead. Yeah. And what I mean by that is if you live in a way where you completely shut off everyone around you and you only worry about the development of your homestead and maybe how you present it on social media or talk about it to people on the phone or at church, and all you do is commute from the homestead to church or to the grocery store and back.
Speaker: and you completely create an environment that cuts off all of your friends and family, then yes, that's probably going to be your experience. But it absolutely 100 % does not have to be. And I would argue that the less that that is the reality, the more enjoyment you will get from your homestead.
Speaker: because if you create an environment that's welcoming, that is full of friendship and community and family engagements, it's going to be an environment that just overflows with joy. People will want to come see you. They will want to visit you.
Speaker: And it's important that if you can, you should make efforts to go see other people too. Get plugged into a local communal network. Maybe it's a homeschool group. Maybe it's a book club. Maybe it's something at a local community center or at a recreation center that you may have to travel 20 minutes to.
Speaker: And then if you think, well, how can I drive 20 minutes there, spend an hour there and drive 20 minutes back? That's a significant chunk out of the day. And I have homestead chores to do. That would be a great opportunity to consider. Are you working for your homestead or is your homestead working for you?
Speaker: Yeah, this topic really comes back to what I think a lot of these misconceptions come down to, and that it's that these things are going to take a little more intentionality, a little more planning and a little more time than they do outside of the homesteading lifestyle, but they're absolutely still possible.
Speaker: I also think that there are people and families that are not very social and also are not homesteading. So if you consider yourself a more social family and that's something that is valuable for you and your family and your lifestyle, that can also flow into homesteading.
Speaker: Yeah. And not just that, but it is an opportunity to consider where a lot of your time and effort does get placed into. If you do find yourself in a position where you are feeling lonely and you're feeling maybe isolated and you're not feeling a lot of joy from within your family, it's probably a good point to consider why that is because we have a responsibility to our families and to providing for them.
Speaker: and I think one of the things that really can help in that is ensuring that we all are finding ourselves committed to the relationships in our family that are helpful and that are loving and charitable and create an environment where we want to be around one another and for many people
Speaker: That's actually a challenge and I think that's a probably a challenge not just of our age but of many times that we would prefer to spend time with other people and not with the people within our homestead or within our household. I wonder if maybe that's a place where we all especially in you know husbands and wives in the vocation of marriage have an opportunity to reflect on what it is that they're doing in their household or not doing and
Speaker: and how they could take that next step every single day to creating an environment that is peaceful and enjoyable and welcoming and just full of joy in their house. I also just wanted to touch on the part of this one regarding children not being prepared for the real world. I think that is something that I hear people say and arguably it's completely invalid. I think that
Speaker: The skills and the real life situations that our children face simply by being on the homestead has prepared them so much more for what they're going to face outside of our home and off the homestead one day when they go out to create their own life. I'm far more confident in the preparedness that our children will have to face and develop their own life and follow whatever call God has placed on their lives.
Speaker: Yeah, I do think there is a temptation for people oftentimes to react in the world and to create a very isolationist environment on their homestead. And I would simply say that that's not something that you absolutely have to do. And that oftentimes it is probably detrimental to the family itself. The better thing to do is to teach people how to handle themselves and encourage them in the skills and the virtues that God has designed for them to be able to adopt.
Speaker: so that when they experience challenges in life that are going to be difficult, that they are prepared and ready to handle those and address them with grace and virtue and with heroic pursuits of sainthood. Yeah, I heard somebody say once that in parenting, our goal is not to protect our children from pain, but it's to teach them and prepare them what to do whenever the pain comes.
Speaker: That's great. All right. Here's one final misconception and probably one of the biggest ones. If you're home setting, do you have to homeschool?
Speaker: I don't think you have to homeschool by any means. I am not aware of super remote communities if there is truly no access to a public school system. I think homeschooling really comes down to the values that the homestead creates and a lot of times it really creates a sense of wanting to spend time with your family and wanting to be a part of
Speaker: developing your children's skills and their knowledge and how they see the world. And I think that it's one of those things where you don't have to homeschool because you're homesteading, but a lot of times what's driving you to homestead is likely also going to drive you to want to homeschool.
Speaker: Yeah, I think more so than that probably calls to mind. Again, it's a word that we continue to say here, which is just intentionality. So it's a pretty intentional decision at this point to break away from the mold and to engage in home setting behaviors. And so if you're being intentional in that, you're probably going to be intentional in your child's education.
Speaker: which means that you're going to consider how they're being educated. For many people, that means public schools or private schools will be an appropriate or suitable place for them to be, depending on the circumstances, where you live in the world, what your local community looks like. And for others, that means that it's not going to be and homeschool is going to be the best option.
Speaker: For us, homeschooling is the best option. And it's an option that it's really not even a, it's not really a contest, I think for us right now. And that's based on where we live, our locale, the culture, the time, the age, et cetera. And so many people will probably come to a similar conclusion, but it doesn't mean that you have to come to that conclusion. You may live in an environment that has a absolutely awesome school system that supports the children's pursuit of God
Speaker: that raises them in good solid education and doesn't cause any moral problems for the child for many people unfortunately it's not the case but the idea that homesteading and homeschooling are uh have to go side by side yeah synonymous it's not accurate yeah and i would encourage everyone again that when you are
Speaker: considering homesteading, it's going to be about intentional decisions for you and your family. And if your homestead is a Catholic homestead, which we strongly support and believe is the best way to do it, then it's going to involve a significant degree of prayer and attention to the things that God is calling you to do in order to raise your family in a way that meets his expectations, respects him, respects one another, and responds to the call that he has for your life, which is ultimately heaven.
Speaker: So when we look back at this list of all these misconceptions, what it all really comes down to is intentionality, planning and understanding your own family, your own goals, and your own values. You can create a homestead to fit what you want it to be, just like you can create your home, not homesteading, to fit whatever you want it to be.
Speaker: Absolutely. And that is where we'll conclude on this episode of the My Catholic Homestead Podcast.
