Episode 86 - Self-Sufficiency

G'day everyone and welcome to another episode of Not The Farmer's Wife, Episode 86 this week. And we're talking all about self-sufficiency and we're also trialing something new. I've got the handy helper here with me. Say Hello. Hello. I'm here today because it's pouring rain outside and I don't want to do any work.

It's been actually really raining quite hard here at the moment, which is a good thing because we have, as you would know if you're a regular listener, we have a hundred and ten thousand litre water tank that feeds our house that We're not on mains water. So without the rain, we're screwed.

So we like having rain a bit, but also too, we've had a fairly dry winter. I think that would be fair to say. Yeah, it has been pretty dry. We've had a fairly dry winter. And so having the rain coming now is fantastic for the grass because we're going to have a big deal Blossom of grass growing. Of course that means we have to monitor little baby goats for not getting sore tummies.

I wanted it to rain today, so I mowed the grass yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's always the way. Usually,, when you wash your car, it rains. Yeah. No, hang on. The council graded the road. So of course it's going to rain. Anyway, we're also trialing something new this week. We're recording under a different format and we're video recording as well.

The handy help is a bit nervous because He's worried about how he looks on video. This doesn't look good on video. But if it turns out okay, and I don't know that it will, but if it turns out okay, we're going to start posting our videos to YouTube as well because we will start posting a few more videos to YouTube about how we do things around the farm.

A lot of people have asked us to actually show, not just talk about what we do. So that's a good thing. Now. I also want to do a bit of a shout out quickly before we start talking to my first ever review on the podcast, a little bit exciting. We're over, we're like, 2250 downloads, I think now, and we've never had a review and I do ask for it in the outro, but if you are so inclined, I would love to have you go along and do a review on what you think about our podcast.

It's a great way for other listeners to 📍 get shown the podcast as an option. If there's more reviews on there, it gets shown to more people. That's just the way the algorithms work. Anyway, shout out to Courtney. Thank you very much for leaving a review. I'm super stoked. You might be not in a situation to homestead at the moment, but like I said to you, the main thing is that you're starting.

Yeah. Start small. Don't, and that's what we're talking about today is the guide to self sufficiency for families and how to get moving with that. Because, and we discussed it before we started recording. There's no point going from. An urban townhouse to 500 acres and thinking that you can just switch your lifestyle over.

Boy, are you in for a shock. Yeah. And yeah, the handy helper can probably speak to it more, more than me even, because I grew up in a farm kind of lifestyle as a teenager. So I had some understanding of what I was walking into, but you came from never having been on a Did you? You'd never really been a veggie gardener. Your mum and dad used to grow a little bit of veggies in the background, backyard, didn't they? But they weren't big on it. Not big on it. No. And they certainly I can't see your mum making sourdough. No. No. I don't think she eats that much bread anyway. No. But as far as milking goats and keeping chalks and things like that, you really, you walked into it completely blind, didn't you?

Oh, I did. Yeah, 100%. I had a rough idea, but just, yeah, I wanted it. That was the thing I wanted it. Yeah. But you'd not done it. And this is the hard bit for people starting out with homesteading. Sometimes they, there's so many options. There's so many things you can do that you don't know where to start.

And I probably don't help in that. Since, cause I am one of those people that does have 15 bulls in the air at the same time. And I've just made a I've just refreshed, I've just refreshed my sourdough. So my mother for my sourdough, so that I can make another loaf of bread. This morning we milked, I need to make some cheese because we've inundated, it's milking season and we've got so much milk.

We can't drink it all. So it's time to make cheese. And at the same time, I'm trying to get, seedlings in for the veggie garden. Yeah, there's lots and I'm trying to find new girls for our Brahma roosters. Roosters. So yeah, I, I probably don't help in the sense that I do have 15 balls in the air and I am trying to do everything.

And that's great for me because I'm, some chores I'm so good at I could do in my sleep. Others, I'm still learning too, like everybody else. It's a continual learning path. The worst thing I think I can ever hear from you is, I've got an idea. Oh my God, here we go. That would be good.

The handy helper hates it. I want to do, a friend of mine, shout out to Dave and his wife, who live in Yass. A friend of mine, and I remember seeing it in their house once, and it was the best idea ever. They had painted blackboard paint down a, like a pillar, like a wall in their house, and they had a little chalkboard, like a little You know, duster and some chalk.

And every time one of them thought of an idea that they had to do on their farm, they just wrote it on the chalkboard, like a continual list. And things would just get wiped off the chalkboard as they were done and added as they were thought of. I'd be constantly walking past it.

It's not nice to any helper. Anyway, let's get chatting because I don't want to go over on this one. I feel like we go over all the time when you and I are chatting because we get Because we're both talkers, so it doesn't help. Self sufficiency for families. Easy tips to start. On your journey.

Okay, and I guess the biggest thing is Start small and just chip away and little things that you find easy to do or things that really interest you because Everything if you're really interested in it, you'll probably put more effort into it So if you have always dreamt of being a gardener then start cutting Growing some plants now.

And if you're in a, if you're in a townhouse or a home, a rental, or yeah, somewhere where you can't really dig up the backyard then do it in containers. We still have plants that we have in pots that we'll never put in the ground. Go to your local Bunnings. They've got excess pots, plastic pots.

They've usually got a big trolley full of them. But they don't give them away. You've got Yeah, they do. They give them away. Really? Yeah. Cause otherwise so get some containers, start and start with things like herbs. Herbs are so easy to grow and you will use them in your cooking. Grow a tomato plant.

Yeah. Cherry tomatoes, the little cherry tomatoes are the best ones to grow straight up because they grow really quick, they ripen really quick, and oh my god, my kids, we never get to use them in the kitchen because when I have cherry tomatoes growing out in the veggie garden, if the kids walk out there, they will just stand next to the plant and pull the cherry tomatoes off and eat them straight up.

Grow a tomato in a pot. Yes. Yeah. Cause if you put it in the ground, you'll have tomatoes grow in that same spot for the next 50 years. We have that current problem at the moment with potatoes, don't we? We moved our potato. We had a big potato bed and we moved it because it was deteriorating. I think when you started moving it.

It was in the way of something else that was a bigger plan for you. So we moved it. Yeah. Cause I'm looking to start a market garden, like a proper market garden. I've got a great idea, honey. We can start a market. Because, we have the land here to grow stuff. So worth it looking at doing it. But so start small, start in containers if you have to.

If you own your backyard, then do it. Why have grass that you've got to mow and look after? I know how much you love mowing grass. Yeah, fantastic. I spent four hours doing it yesterday. So get rid of the grass and grow something that you'll use. If it's your property, if you own it and you are well within your legal rights to dig up the grass in the backyard, get rid of the grass, put a veggie garden in.

But then inside, if you like, just say you're in a townhouse and you don't have the space to do things like that in the backyard, or maybe. The idea of gardening freaks you out because that is a step. That you're just not ready for yet, then start inside now, things like canning and preserving. You don't need to be growing your own vegetables to do this.

When I started doing it, I actually wasn't growing that much. And do you remember a Christmas at Gunning and somebody on a noticeable page, like on one of the local Facebook pages said somebody's coming through from Young, which is a big cherry growing area in Australia. And New South Wales and somebody posted and said somebody's coming through from young.

They've got excess cherries If anybody wants to buy two kilos, they've got them in two kilo bags only. So It was five kilos it was a huge bag if They were only selling them in five kilo bags But at a discounted rate and the rate was like at that point, I think cherries were like 20 or 30 a kilo because it was leading up to Christmas and that's when they're more expensive.

And I got them for 10 a kilo. I think it was like 50 bucks for this five kilo bag. And they were beautiful cherries. There was nothing wrong with them. They were not old. They were not seconds. They were not smashed or crushed or anything like that. I canned cherries and I made cherry jam and then I used cherries for all of our Christmas stuff coming up as well.

So I used the whole five kilos canning, preserving and cooking but got them super, super cheap, but I didn't grow them. We didn't have a cherry tree. We have a cherry tree now that doesn't produce anything. Cause I don't know what's going on with it, but yeah but go to the local markets.

I always, when find going to the markets last thing on a Sunday afternoon. If there are a Saturday, Sunday market, food market, if you go last thing on a Sunday afternoon and walk around the fruit and veg stores, you will find people marking down. They will do up bags of things, and sell them really cheap.

And that's a great way to start canning or preserving because you don't have to grow the produce yourself, but it's just that practice of through preserving it and canning it. The other thing is bread. Which, I make sour, I'm not a big bread eater here because grains don't agree with me, but my children obviously still eat bread.

And, but what I've found is when I feed them sourdough bread, it's much better for their stomachs as well. And the head helps the same, you prefer the sourdough don't you? Yeah, it's good. commercially made bread. And yeah, that's a great way to start is doing just a small loaf of bread and you don't have to do a massive big round loaf.

Sourdough doesn't keep and it doesn't keep because it doesn't have preservatives all through it. So just make a small loaf every day or every other day, depending on what your family's needs are. That's something that you can start with without any problems at all. Cheesemaking. If you're interested in cheesemaking, you don't have to have milking goats or milking cows to do cheesemaking.

You can go and buy. milk from somebody and depending on where you live in the U S you guys are so lucky because you can buy raw milk in Australia. We are legally only allowed to buy goat's milk raw. But yeah even non homogenized milk that you can get in the commercial shops. You can use that for making cheese.

I've seen a guy, there was a guy that I was looking at cause and we'll talk about resources in a sec, but there's a guy on YouTube who does. Cheese making and he was using UHT milk. Now I can't even drink UHT milk. It upsets my stomach. The whole family struggles with UHT milk. But during the non milking times, because we live out of town, there's been times when we have bought UHT milk because we need shelf stable milk.

And he makes cheese out of it. I can't think of anything worse, but that's, now the next thing we want to talk about and you'll talk about a bit handy helper, but DIY essentials frugal living. People need to stop thinking of frugal living is cheap. Frugal living is not cheap. Frugal living is not spending thing, money on things that aren't worth spending the money on.

So don't get me wrong, any helper knows when I need a new bra, I go to the bra shop and I am paying 60 or 70 for a bra because I want one that's comfortable and that I am going to wear without complaining. When I go to buy commercial bread for the kids, I am buying the cheapest one on the shelf.

Like I, it's crap anyway, like all of it's crap anyway. So why would I spend? 5 on a loaf when I can spend 1. 25 on a loaf and all they're going to do is make a sandwich for school out of it anyway. So why would I spend the extra? Still fresh bread, bit of white under them. To me, the bread is not worth the extra.

I would rather spend the extra on making my sourdough and and feed them that. But if they're eating commercially made bread, I'm going to buy the cheapest one. Because it's really not worth it to me to spend the extra money on some special bread. Now the same goes for cleaning supplies and things like that.

We use. I've, and I've just gone back to using it full time a lot of vinegar and a lot of bicarb soda in my cleaning products because it's cheaper and I can make it up as I need it. And I don't have to go to the supermarket. I can buy, like I bought, I think it was a five kilo bag from Costco as a bicarb.

And the vinegar came in a four pack. four pack of four liter. Yeah. Vinegar. So we've still got, we've still got eight liters out there that we haven't even touched yet. And it was cheap. It was actually cheap. Now in the past I have actually made vinegar. I think, do you remember at Gunning? Yeah, we used to half, half bottle it and put water in and leave it sit for three months and it turns into vinegar.

So even if you want to go that frugal, you can with what the prices are at Costco at the moment. I haven't bothered because It's cheap as buggery anyway. So I've just been buying it straight. But yeah, vinegar and bicarb soda for cleaning. Now, DIY stuff. I'll let you talk about because you are the DIY king when it comes to recycling things, aren't you?

I love it. I hate spending money on anything. So what are your best tips for people when they're first starting out? Especially with gardens, like I mentioned before, with pots and bits and pieces. Yep. You can grab the pots from Bunnings. They do tuck a lot out. If you've got to pay five bucks for 20 pots, so be it.

It's probably gonna be a lot easier around the garden if you do it that way. Other things you can find on marketplace. Do you love your marketplace? I love my marketplace and stuff like that. You might find people throwing out like the the corrugated iron garden beds or something like that.

Cheapest buggery. They're good too. They work. Or even if you have to pay, even if they're not getting rid of it for free, but you pay at a reduced rate. Half the time you pay bugger all. Yeah. So I'm the corrugated iron king. I am. I am. I just search Marketplace for corrugated iron all the time because I use it for everything.

It just comes up on your feet all the time doesn't it? Yeah, I use it for everything. I build the shelters for the animals out of it. I build bloody garden beds out of it. I do everything. We do joke a bit that neither of us are particularly worried about either of us chatting with other people. Other people online, because I'm saying that in inverted commas for those listening.

It's like how I had the ban from all homes for a while, because I kept looking above. You can use marketplaces gold. People throw a lot of stuff out and, Recycle a lot of stuff and sometimes you get free things like a six by four greenhouse. Yes Yeah, that was our last one wasn't it? Yeah, you found it.

Yeah, amazing six by four greenhouse free come and disassemble yourself there was a few arguments involved in that, but I may have nearly been cut off from any kind of emotion from the handy helper for 24 hours. It was ugly. But it was six by four greenhouse and it's now set up, it's set up in our veggie garden at the moment.

It's actually tied to the ground and the fence at the moment because we've had a few issues with wild weather and winds. But. It's yeah, it was free. Yeah, which was good. And it's good. It's in good nick, which was good. It's exactly what we needed Yeah, you can find recycle do a lot of things like that Saves you a hell of money.

And we do joke that you never throw anything out. No I don't, I've got the biggest pile of crap next to the shower. Which can be a blessing. Can be a blessing and can be a curse. There are times where I say quite often when I walk out to the shed, I'm going to get a skip in. I'm going to hire a skip in to come in and we're going to clean the shed out.

We're going to throw all this shit out. And of course that never happens because we end up using stuff in there. Sometimes you've got to put up with a little bit of mess to have all those extra things. Now there's lots of other things you can do too, like recycling furniture certainly our milking bale.

Our milking bale was built out of a coffee table. Yep, and all you did was put on a headlock on to the front of headlock for the front out of scrap timber, mind you. Yeah, and some leg ties on the back with a bit of rope. And it's still, it's been going since Gunning. Oh God. So what's that? Five years? Five years.

Five years would been looking still and yeah. Yeah. No problems at all. It's good. Look, in hindsight, if we could have bought a new one, that would've been great. Fantastic. If we had the money, not buy it when you can build it. But we didn't have the money at the time and this was a much, I think it cost me 20 bucks from the green shed for the coffee table.

And oh, I found the coffee table because I rang you and said, I found a coffee table, rest of the timber we found around the farm and just, yeah. And did it. Yeah. Now, one thing that you can do with your starting, like when you're first starting out is go for all the resources and honestly use free resources.

Our podcast is out there for exactly that purpose to try and get people thinking about things they can do. So podcasts are a great one to listen to. As far as books go, you all know that I'm a horrible fangirl for Joel Salatin. That would be my, lifetime. I think if I could ever interview him for the podcast, Oh my God, I would die.

He has amazing ideas and people, I think sometimes people go he was gifted the farm. Of course, he's able to do all this kind of stuff, but he didn't, he wasn't working like he was working as a journalist and then he stopped working and so did his wife. And they were trying to completely live self sufficiently and make an income off their farm.

So he, It didn't get it any easier than anybody else. Yes, he got gifted a farm. I didn't get gifted a farm, so we're certainly not in that boat there. But He still had to do all the work to get things moving and to get, his chicken coops built and start selling chicken coops and doing the marketing and stuff like that.

He still had to do all of that. So follow him. He's a good one to have a look at. His books are awesome. Justin Rhodes, who's over in the States is another one who's awesome at it. Melissa K. Norris has A lot of online resources that are free and she does a lot of things with kitchen stuff, but also herbal medicines and things like that.

So she's awesome. And I know Courtney, that left me the review she was asking about her. I think at the moment she's just about to run a free course of some kind or a free webinar or something. So jump onto Melissa Kay Norris, if you're interested in that kind of stuff. But there's so many.

YouTube clips out there. There's so many podcasts out there that are talking about it now. There's the movement has grown so big, so quick that you will find somebody who gels with you. And that's what you have to do. You have to find somebody that really gels with you. There's people that I've listened to over the years and I've gone, nah, just there's something about them that just, it doesn't, they're not my people.

And so I find somebody else and that's what you have to do is just hunt until you find the right people have different ideas. And. Yeah, you've got to find your the people that yeah, you got to find that sing to you what suits you. Yeah Because otherwise you're listening and you won't really take in what they're offering.

But certainly go check out free resources. All of those people I mentioned have all got free resources that they do. Now they do also have paid resources. You have to remember that. Even like myself, I'm trying to earn an income off this. Everybody has paid resources as well, but use the free ones first.

If you're really just starting out, don't go head over heels and buy shit. If you are still at that beginner stage, test the water first. One thing I always say, who cares what it looks like as long as it works. Yeah. And that's a Joel Salison thing that we really don't have to look pretty and brand new.

If it's. And we definitely gelled with Joel Sullivan on that respect, that he is a big second hand materials user. He will recycle everything. But also too, he doesn't care. Like he, he was, I think I remember watching a video where he was wearing a shirt that had not Joel on the name. Like it was like a work shirt and it had a name on it, but it had a logo of a company as well.

And he said, he buys his farm clothes from the secondhand shop. And he buys like workman's clothes that have been handed in, brace overalls to hold up his pants so that when his weight fluctuates, it doesn't matter. And these work shirts with. And they've all got somebody else's name and yeah, Bob, and it's, some tire repair place.

And he's wearing the shirt, but that's because the shirt was still in good nick. And obviously the owner grew out like they outgrew it. And they've handed it into, to, a thrift shop or a secondhand shop. And he's gone and bought it to wear around the farm so that he doesn't destroy good clothes around the farm.

I can understand why he does it. Yeah, because our clothes get destroyed. So secondhand clothes are one of the best tips when it comes to gardening and dealing with animals and livestock. And we actually spoke to a guy at Costco yesterday when we were shopping who had on a ringers, a Western ringers shirt, which is a big brand here in Australia.

And he had one that buttoned all the way down the front, but I commented to him because the color of the shirt is a color that I've been trying to find. And it's obviously an older color that they had back in the day. And, but he had the buttons all the way down the front. And I said, Do they make it with the half buttons where it's only buttons around the neck, not all the way down to your waist, to your belt line.

And he said, yeah, why? And I said, because it's easier for us with animals because things don't get caught in the buttons. And he said, I'd never even thought of that. Never even realized. But he said, it's true. He said, even getting on and off horses, the buttons, having the buttons would drag on the saddle and damage the saddle.

Carrying bales of hay. Carrying bales of hay gets caught on the buttons. So having a shirt that is only like a polish it like what I'm wearing now, if you're watching the video where it's just buttons at the top and the waste area is completely intact, you don't end up with all crud in your clothes.

Anyway, that was just a little side note. Now, getting the family on board. What do we do to get the family on board? We didn't really give much choice, did we? Look, I think if you've got kids and most of my listeners probably do have kids or are aiming to have kids at some point in time. Getting them involved in the fun tasks.

The first time that MJ and OJ went and collected eggs, you could not wipe the smile off their face for a week. Yeah, it's pretty funny actually. It was. They came out so excited and 'cause our first chickens were Hans, , so they have blue eggs, so they came out with these blue eggs and it was just this sense of wonder on the, like that they.

I think AJ carried the egg around for about four hours. He didn't want to put it down. It's this is my egg. I collected my egg. But gardening, my kids are both they both love the idea of gardening. I think they love the idea of gardening because they love eating fresh. things out of the garden.

So when the raspberry cane goes crazy they just stand out there and eat off it. And the raspberry cane has gone crazy. So I will definitely be making raspberry jam and things like that for the kids this year. Getting them involved in gardening, getting them involved in looking after chickens.

And I talk about it in my chicken keeping course, that, kids can manage the chicken maintenance. There's, yeah, depending on their age and abilities. They may need to be overseen, but you could absolutely hand over chicken care of a small clutch of chickens to kids without a problem and just oversee the bigger chores or the heavier chores.

Baking. My kids are both, they both love cooking. We have a very because I work so many hours my kids have to help out with cooking. So they cook once a week each using the Thermomix that we have. But if I do baking or anything like that, MJ is straight in there. She is, she loves the idea of baking.

I think at one point she did talk about maybe being a chef. She's since worked out that, Chefs work really hard long hours when everybody else is out being sociable. So I think that's turned her off that idea. But getting the kids involved with that kind of thing is awesome. It's, that's a way to really get the family on board.

Now, if you have a partner, Who perhaps isn't so on board. Did you see me roll my eyes then? Yeah, I know. For those listening, you can't see it, but he was rolling his eyes. Handy Helper. What, as a partner who wasn't involved and unfortunately met somebody who went, Oh, by the way, I've got this great idea.

We're going to run a farm. We're going to homestead and run a farm. What would you say is a good way to entice? Couldn't escape already because she'd tied me to the kitchen bench. That's not true. I, like I say, from my background, I had no idea what I was doing. We'd had chooks when I was a kid, but that was about it.

Nothing too exciting about it, but it's one of those things you do learn as you go. Yeah, which is good and I am a YouTube king as well If I don't know what I'm doing with something, I'll YouTube it. Usually in secret where you can't find it So I look like I know what I'm doing But you do learn as you go Is there anything that I said to you or did that convinced you that this might be a good idea?

No, it was all lies. That's not true. No, it's not true. No, it was I was sick of the hustle and bustle in town as well. So when we did move out to Gunning, out to the small farm, it was it was like a breath of fresh air. It really was. It was good. So much room. He liked being outside. I loved being outside.

So much room things to do. I, I. It was good. It was good. I think all you can do is just try little things. If you've got somebody who's not on board, try little things and see how you go. I think once people understand the lifestyle a bit better and understand that, things do take a little bit longer and we'll talk about that in a sec, but well things take a little bit longer You certainly your lifestyle will be better for it and your health will be better for it food wise We have people come out here to see us that have never been out here before Like they live in town and have always lived in town Yeah, they come out here and the first thing they do they get out of the car and they look around and go Wow Yeah, so much space.

Look how much room you have, I'm not opening up the bedroom blinds in the morning. Literally, we could walk out to our clothesline naked from the shower and nobody would see us where we live. Not that we ever do that. Google Maps. I that we ever do that. But certainly addressing concerns with any family members who might be, a bit concerned about it.

Health is definitely a big plus for homesteading. You you'll eat better. And. Eat healthier foods and less processed foods because you have more available to you. Financial savings financial savings. You look, you'll, some people joke and say, it's gardening is the only hobby where you spend 60 to save 30 cents a kilo on tomatoes.

But, you can't really put a financial thing on it when it's your health. I don't think. Yeah. They just don't taste much better. And certainly with eggs, like in my backyard chicken camcorder, I talk about the fact that eggs are actually cheaper when you look at pasture raised eggs, what they cost at the supermarket, versus Pasture raised eggs that you can raise yourself at home.

I think I worked out that it was like a dollar 31 per pasture raised egg in the shops versus oh, sorry, a dollar 31 for three pasture raised eggs in the shops versus 60 cents for three pasture raised eggs at home. So it was less than half price. So there are financial savings to be had. They may not feel like it to start with, but they will Definitely be there and they'll be there because your health will improve as well.

So that means that down the track those incremental changes will add up financially eventually. But you'll also spend more time together, which we certainly do. Bad luck if we didn't like each other because we are up at, Unfortunately, depending on whether or not HandyHelper is working that day, we're up at 4.

30 in the morning because he does 12 hour shifts because he's a shift worker. We're up at 4. 30 in the morning to milk goats to feed other goats, to check other livestock, to make sure everything's right, everything's got water for the day. And then we go off and work for the day, and then we come back and we're out again in the paddocks.

It's dealing with animals and, managing who's coming in and who's going out and if anything needs doing, if animals need worming or feet need trimming or anything like that, and that happens at that time. So we spend a lot of time together and we spend a lot of time with the kids too. Excuse me, they don't have much choice because they're out here helping us as well.

Now, creating a transition plan is the next thing that I had on the list. And that's something that it's really important if you are in that circumstance where you're in a small house or townhouse or anything like that. Don't try and jump in with everything in one go. And that's what we talked about before we started recording.

We were going through the list of things that I had to talk about and we were laughing about how it was actually a real blessing for us to go from suburbia to two and a half acres and start that process of having a veggie garden, having some chooks. Then towards the end of our time on the two and a half acres, we got milking goats and we got the marimba.

because we're having problems with domestic dogs coming into the chickens and we have fruit trees and we had a veggie garden still, and we had a beehive. And then from there, we transitioned over to 120 acres and we have six beehives and we have a veggie garden. It's been a bit remiss the last couple of days, but the last couple of years, but we're working on it this year.

We're doing a big push for it this year. One thing at a time. Yeah. We wanted to get animals. We've got milking goats sorted. We've got Angora goats sorted. We've got a couple of potty cows. The chickens are all sorted. The chickens are an evolving, ever going process, but they're all sorted.

Now we'll move on to Veggie Garden in more detail kind of thing. But that's, it's a transition that you make and you have to time it out. You have to go, I'm doing this year. I'm not going to worry about all that other stuff. I'm just going to work on the next thing, the next year. Sorry, I've got a tickle in my throat.

I should have brought some water over with me. Anyway, So the last little, we're on the homestretch, overcoming challenges and finding time. What did you find overwhelming? And wow, I'm going to disappear for a second, grab a glass of water. What did you find challenging when we first started Handy Helper?

Oh, it was definitely the time, finding the time to do things. We would take on too many things at once and that was half the problem, I think trying to do too many things at once. You've got to get a mindset on. getting something done and set up right first before you start on the next thing. But yeah, I think it was the time challenge was the thing.

Cause we're still working. Both of us still work full time. We walked into this farm, the 120 acres and it needed a bit of work. Yes. To start with before we could even start, we didn't, we still don't have all the animal shelters that we need. We're still working on that. But being the king and queen of DIY and recycling, we have sourced some pallets.

So timber pallets that they use for moving stock on, and we have managed to find a source for that. And now we are utilizing as many pallets as we can to make shelters for animals. Fencing is probably a big one that we're going to have to work on. That's the next big one is the fencing. We want to split a few of the real big paddocks up into four paddocks, so that we can do proper stock rotation.

Yeah, so that, yeah, do our strip grazing that we talk about, which works a treat. It works for keeping parasite loads down and animals healthier, because you don't have to artificially feed them. Get rid of the parasites. Yep. Yep. And you're feeding a lot more off the ground.

Yeah, not having to hand feed With the rotation of the paddocks. Yeah, it gives it time to grow back bits and pieces So that's our next big thing would be all the fencing for that And certainly I think it's important to understand that when you do make a mistake when something goes wrong Like I've made batches of soap before that haven't turned out and they were like gel in the middle, weren't you just, you dust yourself off and go that's okay.

I know what didn't work. What is it? Mistakes are simply ways that we know that we're trying and we and what was it? Edison found 99 ways that a light bulb didn't work before he found one way that the light bulb did work. And that's, you do have to have that mentality, that mindset when you go into it, because otherwise you'd beat yourself up.

If you constantly, you will make mistakes. And if you made those mistakes. Yes. You do. And beat yourself up about it. You would never get anywhere. You would stop. The amount of times I've spent three hours doing something and then stood back and gone, shit, that didn't even work. Yeah. I should have done it this way.

Crap, innit? So you But you know for next time. Yeah. That's right. It's just, you've just worked out a way that it will work and you really have to have that mindset. If you're not the kind of person that would have that mindset, then I would almost say just stick to doing the smaller things that you can do in an urban environment.

Don't try and go bigger. Yeah. But. Acknowledging that the mistakes are there is a good one too, because we, nobody likes to admit they've made a mistake, but acknowledging it and then moving on from it. Making time for self sufficiency is one of the things, because we laugh about it that, all the things that I do to save money.

expend time. And when you talk to business entrepreneurs and things like that, a lot of people will say you have to work out what's more important, your time or your money. You can either pay for it to be done for you, or you can expend the time doing it. And I think that homesteading is one of those weird kind of areas where the people that get involved in it want to do the things themselves, even though they know that financially they could buy it cheaper.

I could just buy cheap Chinese soap, and be done with it. But I like making my own soap and I feel like it's a better quality soap. And it gives, it brings me joy to do it. Making sourdough bread. Yeah, I could go and spend six, Fuck, what are they at the moment? It's 9 for a loaf of sourdough bread at the bakery.

Yeah, it's 9, I think they were 10. Yeah, I can make a loaf of sourdough for about 50 cents, I think it works out, because I buy the flour in bulk. And I've already got my sourdough starter here, and it's literally water, salt and flour. That's all I'm putting in. Because we're off grid, I'm not even paying for power because you're paying one way or another, but I'm not paying for it in the instant that I'm using it.

Making sourdough bread and making your own soap and all that kind of thing, it does take time and you do have to weigh up time versus dollar. But if it's something that really brings you joy and you want the healthier option, I think that is something that you really have to work out. But sit down and work out how many hours you do have.

Gardening, once it's set up, gardening is a, to me, is a fairly low. maintenance thing. I check them each day, water them each day if it's been a particularly hot day because we do get particularly hot summers here. But harvesting is probably the most amount of work I'll do over the course of the garden.

Once I've got it established, once the seedlings are out, harvesting is the next biggest chore. Everything over the course of the six, eight weeks, 12 weeks, whatever it takes for that particular plant to grow is very minimal expenditure each day. Food prep is a big one for me each day, but involve family members.

Handy helper cooks. once or twice a week. I cook, yeah, I cook, if he's not working, I cook once or twice a week. The kids both have a turn each week. And then occasionally we'll get takeout. We live a long way from any takeout shops. So generally our takeout will be lunch, not dinner because we'll have it while we're out.

But, Utilising your time where I say to the kids I'm going out to do animals, I need you to cook the rice, I need you to cook the butter chicken, I need you to cook spaghetti bolognese, whatever it is that they're doing that particular night, and leaving them to do it and knowing that they can do it.

Bigger projects we try and do on your days off, my days off, which don't always align. But we just, we have a calendar and we go through once a week we move the chickens onto a new patch of grass. And you have got into a real pattern with that now, haven't you? You set up. He, so handy helper will lock up the chickens that night to move them, but he's already got the yards.

That's the hardest part of it. He's already got the yard set up for the next move. New yard's already set up. Yeah. Because you do it as soon as you move them. When I move them, I pull the other one down and I move it further up the paddock and set it up again. So it's ready to go. Yep. So then a week later when it's time to move them off the old grass onto a new patch.

It's just a matter of locking them up that night. Then he gets up first thing in the morning, takes his little ride on over to hook up the, he's got an old ride on mower that we used. It's not real old, but it's had some use. Oh no, it's your normal ride on isn't it? It's not the old secondhand one.

And he takes that over and he hitches the trailer to it and moves the trailer into the new patch of grass and then straight away resets up. Yep. Pull the old one down. Pull the old fence down and resets it up straight away so that it's always ready to go. I pull it down. I mow the grass where it was.

Yep. Because it breaks up all the shit. Breaks up all the shit. Chicken shit. Chicken shit and stuff through the grass. Comes back as green as buggery next time it grows. So our goat slash chicken paddock, which is about four acres is at the moment, it has these big lush patches of grass where the chickens have been like a couple of months ago, the chickens were, and now the grass is coming through and it's beautiful.

So you have to get into, you have to be a little bit. Military with you, how you do things in that once it's time to do something You just you've got it scheduled in the calendar. You go do it. It's like first of the month I check the goats for parasites to see if they're anemic so I know whether or not I'm gonna have to worm that month If I've got it in my calendar and it bings up and says, check the goats, I know to go out and check.

And I randomly just check a couple of different goats just to say but you just have to have that time management kind of built in and use a calendar to say, this is when this is happening. Now staying motivated and avoiding burnout is our last one. And look at this. We're almost on time. Handy help.

Oh, we're only at the 40 minute mark. Yeah. So the big one, is celebrating victories when you have a win. And this, the other week when we lost our beautiful girl, Willow, and had her orphan daughter, basically, that we're on bottle feeding. And then seven days later, eight days later, we had an Angora kid and the kid got stuck and passed.

And Even though those two events in themselves were very sad, particularly Willow passing, that really hit home for all of us. That was a killer. Yeah. But the win out of it, and this is, and I was so pleased that both my kids said it because it was, it shows such a level of resilience at an early age. Both the kids said when we told them that we were able to surrogate Willow's daughter, On to Lizzie, who had lost a kid when we're able to do that, both kids said, Oh my God, that's the best news.

Like what a win where we're able to give Peggy a natural Upbringing, a natural raising because she was able to surrogate onto a mum who can feed her on tap, who cares for her, looks after her, teaches her all the goatee behaviours that we want her to have. As far as Peggy knows, that's mum now. Yeah Peggy just, she's so attached to her, so bonded.

And Lizzie is like the overbearing helicopter parent. She runs around the paddock, bleating at her come back to me, daughter, come back to me, and so now we have another issue where Peggy has developed milk neck, which is a condition that Anglo Nubians get when they're getting too much milk.

And so she's now sporting milk neck, which we kept teasing her and saying that's because she's a little piggy and a little goatee. But yeah, you got to celebrate the victories, especially, If you've had a hardship come before it, you really have to hang on to those victories and go, yes, we've had a win.

Now that could be as little as. I haven't had to buy tomatoes for the last three months because I've been growing tomatoes in my backyard and I've not had to buy tomatoes. That is a win and you should celebrate that. You should really be proud of yourself if you can get to that point. If you're able to can, if you're able to get some fruit, even if you didn't grow it, if you're able to can some fruit, turn it into jam with a lot less sugar in it for your kids and no preservatives.

That's a win celebrate it, you know posted on social media And if you do post it on social media link mojo homestead into it because I would love to see what your small wins are we had a few little wins like that in gunning if you really did We found a plum tree that was growing outside of the road and I made jam out of it That had the sweetest place right to the council I actually Contacted the council because I thought I'm gonna get in trouble doing this So I spoke to the council and another lady who I knew in gunning who was like me and like to forage for things She I, we were talking online and I said, Oh, this tree's got these plums.

And she, me and her went up and cleaned the tree off. And we said to the council, we're doing you a favor because you're not going to have all this wasted fruit sitting at the bottom that's going to attract pests. Our next door neighbor had hazelnuts that she didn't want to harvest. I went and harvested them for her.

I made Nutella, homemade Nutella for the kids. They said it was the best Nutella they'd ever had. So yeah, you've got to celebrate those wins. If it's your first egg, post it. I see it all the time. People post a picture of a chicken. Going, I just laid my first egg, celebrate the wins because I tell you what, there's, there will be heartache and there will be hardships.

And so it's really important to not let them get you down in this lifestyle. And you reach out by doing that, you'll reach out to families that are like minded like you. And that's always a good thing. You will find a group of them. Yeah. And having people that you reach out to and talk to who.

Are doing the same things as you, when they come across problems, they'll reach out to you and tell you about those problems and that might save you some effort down the track. They also might be able to swap things with you. They might be growing an abundance of zucchini, but have hardly any tomatoes.

You might have a million tomatoes and no zucchinis, so you might be able to do a swap, which is going to save everybody down the track. So that's it for us as far as getting, making those first steps. I know we talked about beginner homesteading last week, but I just wanted to be a bit more specific about the kinds of things you could do.

And certainly from our perspective, it's a learning curve. It's we're still doing it. We're still learning. We're still, there are still things that we're getting right or wrong. And I don't think you ever stop learning in this area. So if you don't have that open minded kind of learning mindset it's probably going to be hard for you to do.

You have to really go into it going, I don't know everything and I can't know everything, but I can make a fair crack at learning. Do your research. That's all I can say. Yeah. A lot of research. Before you dive in, do your research, especially if you want to move out to a farm or something like that as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Do your research beforehand. Yeah. And, and know that you're going to have council digging up the road every single time, right before it rains. Yeah. I don't think. We can do a lot of clockwork at the moment. We can. There's a long range weather forecaster that I follow and I can never remember his name.

It's actually not, the name is the name of the guy who taught him how to do the long range weather forecasting. And yeah. Every time the council dig up the road, I go onto his page and have a look and he's always just predicted that we're about to get rain when they come and dig up the road.

It's like clockwork. So yeah, whatever area you're looking at, do a lot of research first. If you have to rent or even just go and use community gardens to start with, to get you started on that process. That's something I didn't mention, but community gardens are a great one. I beekeeping friends in Canberra.

Have their beehives set up at community gardens because it's a win for everybody. The bees pollinate all the fruit and make sure that everything is fruiting and growing the way that it's supposed to. And the bees are getting an abundance of pollen because of all the plants with flowers on them.

It, community gardens are a great place to start if you don't have the facilities to do a wider scale, larger kind of system. Anyway, we're under 50 minutes, which is a miracle. Now before we go if you haven't left a review, go leave a review. I want reviews. Reviews make it easier for other people to find the podcast.

The other thing is that I may not be running a backyard chicken keeping course in November, like I had planned, and I know I haven't sent much out. About it, but keep an eye on the socials. I've actually almost finished putting all the final touches on our dispatch and disassemble course, which is how to grow your own.

chickens for meat for your own consumption. Now, obviously this may not apply to some people that live in really built up suburban areas, but I know of a few people, particularly in the States, who are growing their own meat birds in their backyards and dispatching and disassembling in their backyards.

You don't need an excessive space for meat birds which on the course that I'm doing up that we only use a chicken tractor. So it's a very small amount of space, which could absolutely be done in the backyard. Easy. Yeah. And the meat. How good was the meat? It was awesome. It was so much better than chicken meat that you buy at the shops.

And you don't have it going through that horrible process of being bleached in order to look good and chemicals on it and shit like that. And that course is going to be, when I have put all the finishing touches, I haven't decided on a price yet, but that course was going to be a mini course. So there's not going to be much assistance from me with the course.

It'll be a series of videos, a series of documents, a series of of written stuff, but it was going to be cheap, like 19. Something like that. And that's Australian. So for the US guys, that's probably about 14, 15. For the 10 pound. It's definitely going to be a cheapy course because I really want to get the word out there and I would rather not earn as much money off it and know that more people have the facilities, have the access to those kind of, that kind of information to do it.

Anyway, that's it for us this week. Say goodbye to everyone, Handy Helper. Look, and we're still on video and we, and you still don't look like dorky. Sure. All right. Thanks everyone. We will talk to you next week. Okay, cool. Bye for now.