The Consolation Cow (Chat from our Homestead Festival Trip)

Hey y'all. So I just tried to go live and do a live chat for you all and unfortunately I don't think the internet is going to cooperate. This is my friend Leah. She's here with me. We're going to do just a little sit down and talk and share with you about our experience at the Homestead Festival and I'm just going to upload this raw. I'm not going to edit it because while I would have loved to chat with you live, apparently rural Tennessee is not super supportive of that. I literally made fun of it in my stories last night on Instagram. I was like, what is the deal? I think all of Tennessee doesn't have good life plans. I'm making a blanket statement. We, uh, well, yeah, I mean, just driving here, that is everywhere. It felt like that, but of course, rural areas, but I, um, yesterday was the first day of the Homestead Festival in Columbia, Tennessee, which is at Hardison Mill, and I went the inaugural year of the festival, which was, this is the fourth year, and then the second year Leah came and flew in and came with me. Um, oh, hey, KK. Good morning. Our house is just waking up. We got up early. Um, but last year I was not at the festival, but you know, they mix it up and get different speakers, but then they asked me back this year and I said, yes, and I asked Leah to come down and we have a house full and so much fun. I'm so glad to be here. Yeah. I appreciate you being here. She, she helps by standing in line and taking pictures when everybody wants a picture. And it's nice because I've actually had a lot of people post that when they stand in line to get a picture and then, you know, somebody else will take it from them. Sometimes it ends up blurry or different things. And they're so disappointed. So I like to have somebody around that can, so I can make sure people are getting a good picture and I love it because I just get to sit there and hear them all love on you so much. And I tell them, I'm like, what you see is what you get. She's just how you think she is. She's wondering. It is, it is very sweet. It's very humbling to get to meet so many people. It's why I do conferences. I don't do it for the public speaking. I'll tell you that much. I, uh, I get like secondhand nervous for you so much. I don't like public speaking either. Well, you, you're in the car on the way there. What I'm just like, all the nerves. Uh, so yesterday I spoke first and then today we speak last, but today I speak with Jeremiah and that's a lot easier for me to, which I think it'll be great this last because if it doesn't storm us, hopefully yesterday, the bottom fell out. It was, I loved it. California rain in the summer where we were from. No rain in the summer, but she did say, cause it was, it was a thunderstorm. I mean, it was lightning and it was pretty intense. You know, I mean, we're under a tent. Yeah. We pulled our tent. Now we have like it's 10 by 20 booth where we're selling like merch and stuff. And we set up a space so we can sign books and everything. And we just pulled, pulled it down low and we're all just kind of huddled underneath it, pulled our stuff in, try to keep it from getting wet. And Leah was like, yeah, usually if there's lightning, something starts burning. I honestly, and this is with no exaggeration, I cannot remember a time, maybe once in the last few years that if there's lightning, there's not a fire. Wow. So a lot, a lot of times our fire department is really, really good. They get on top of those fires really quickly, but it's a little nerve wracking. You're like, okay, there's going to be Yeah. It was nice to know there's not, nothing will light here. We're saturated. Like breathing in soup. I texted my husband yesterday, a picture of the 85% humidity and just put soup. It was like gross. It is. I say, sometimes I have to swim to my car. It just is so human. And now people know why I I called him and I said, I will take my brown grass and my dry heat all day long. See, I got wetness within the first day. My nose is bleeding. My lips are chapped. I feel absolutely amphibious when you take me out of the human self, because I'm like, I'm not made for dry climates. I am so fully acclimated to being in high humidity all the time that I come here and absorb and I just get puffier and puffier just with so much water. It's wild. I have so many creases on my legs from just sitting on a chair. I'm like, I am so puffy right now. I think our biology is just fascinating. I think that's so cool. What is it called? Adapted to our surroundings. So, um, one of my favorite things about going to festivals is hearing the stories of all the people who have taken the leap at this point. Yeah. I mean, I cannot tell you how many people told me yesterday, I started watching you and you know, like 18, 19, 20, 20, somewhere in there. And they were like, and I was in an apartment, I was in a neighborhood, I was in an HOA, and now I'm on five acres, 10 acres, 15 acres, 50 acres, you know, like, and people of all ages, all demographics. It was just really, really cool for me. It is really cool. And they're telling me, they're like, I attribute this to you and your vlog. I'm like, listen, you did the hard work. Like, please do not, I don't want the credit for this. They come up and they're like, I can't wait to show her my garden. And they're like searching for the pictures. Always show me pictures of your garden. Like, I want to see them. They're like, this is Jess' garden. I saw a lot of cattle panel trellises yesterday and pictures. But it really is, it's a huge blessing to get to meet people. I always say this when I speak, but like, when I stand up in front of a, you know, a tent full or a room full or an auditorium full, I'm always like, everybody will always clap, you know, like, hey, welcome. Yeah, let's start. We're clapping. And I'm like, I get extremely like, I don't know how to describe it. It's wild because it's like, wow, there's real people on the other side of this. I theoretically know that, like, obviously, obviously I know there are real people on the other side. But like, whenever you see the real people and you see their faces and like, you feel them and it's just like, you're like, oh, you're really there. Oh my goodness. All those numbers on the screen, that's a representation of people. I don't know. It is, it's just, it's humbling. And then hearing all the stories. It, when I, I said, you know, we were not signing up for a lot of conferences coming up just because we have some things that we're working on that are, you know, going to be a lot. But like, I will find a way to like, make that connection because I don't think I could, even though it's hard to like, take the family and travel and cover the farm and, you know, this, it's a lot to do this, but I need that connection with people. Yeah. It's really special. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, with people jumping off, I just thought it would be kind of cool. You, you were in a pretty different place homesteady a couple of years ago when you came. Yes. I, yeah. I mean, we're kind of still there for us to build our house, but I don't know. I would say you're doing much more homesteading. That's true. I, well, last time I wasn't milking a cow every morning. Yeah. So we, I mobile milk and I, I scoured YouTube. I was like mobile milking. It's not really a thing. It's hugely inconvenient. It's such a God story because it's taking a long time to just get this process. We bought some acreage and we're trying to build on it, but we live in California. So permitting everything is taken like a year. So escrow took 11 months. Drafting took over a year, permitting took over a year. So it's just been a really long process. But in the meantime, I'm like, I, I'm gardening at my mom's garden. She passed away a few years ago, have a little garden at my house. So that was still going in a neighborhood and I live in a neighborhood. Yes. Not a big backyard, actually a big front yard, but not a big backyard. And so I have like every dirt space I made into a garden basically besides like a little bit of grass. Cause if we resell it, like probably should have a little bit of grass. But anyways, so we have a dairy cow and we bought it from our friends and it stays at their house. And I drive every morning to go milk it. And then they, they help take care of it, but then they get the milk every other day, but I milk every day. And so it's, yeah, I'm like, you can raise meat chickens at someone else's house. Yes. The same people we've raised meat chickens with them. We have bees and our bees are, which they basically, I need to learn from them. They pretty much take care of them right now. They were my mom's bees. And then when she passed, they took them and put them over there. But they're like, until we can't put them on our property because of bears will destroy them if no one lives there. And so, but yeah, I'm like, it's when I finally have everything under one area where I live, it's going to be really, really convenient and really nice. And I told her, I said, when most people start from staying, like they move to their farm and they start doing this stuff, they have to adjust to be hard work. And I'm like, you're going to, you're going to go, you're going to be going out milking the cow every morning and moving the meat chickens and doing the garden and being like, this is so easy. Seriously. Right now you're going to multiple properties. I'm like, someone's like, you drive every day. It's like 15 minutes. It's not dreadful, but in our area, 15 minutes is actually a lot of driving because it's a smaller, you know, city and we don't have to drive a ton, but, but it's great because it does get me up in the morning. It keeps me like, it gets my day started. I can't not milk the cow, like cow will die. So when you homeschool children, it is nice to have necessary things to make structure because while being laid back is very great having necessary structure. I would be in my bed for way longer and yeah, which I have nothing against rest is great. But yeah, for me, I know I'm like, I need something to kind of kick me in the butt and get me out of bed. So, but it's been really fun. She's pregnant right now and due in October. And then they also have another cow there that's due in October, but I'm going to be milking both of them and then we'll do the same thing. We'll, we'll share milk, but yeah, it's been, it has been really cool to learn from him because how they do their farm and everything. I do like the morning chores when I'm there and it's been great to learn and have, I turned my waiting room very literally, but it's, it's really cool to be able to do that. So I'm like, I always encourage people. I'm like, if you can find someone that's like-minded to learn from them, go, go see if you can help with the chores, just because it gets you to learn enough to where when you do have your own thing, you're not going to be drowning quite as much. I mean, truly that really is. I mean, if you have a dream preparing yourself for it to whatever capacity you can and you know, Leah situation, I think, I don't think it's impossible for other people to find situations like that. It is unique in that, you know, not everybody has like a homesteading friend that will allow a cow to stay at their farm, you know, but I've, we have a family that milks our cow twice a week. Um, some of our really good friends, they used to get milk from us. And when we downsized everything, we were like, we can't keep, we, you know, our numbers, we were going to lower our numbers. And then we ended up losing two cows that summer. So it was just like, you know, a rough thing. And both of those were very separate events. And one of which was just an older cow with health issues. And one was like a freak incident. But, um, anyway, so we were like lowering our numbers and we're like, we can't provide milk for other people anymore. But we were trying to figure out how do we simplify? And so this, we have a family that's our good friends and they have several children and are, they are also doing kind of a homesteading thing, but do not have the infrastructure or really the time cow is a daily commitment. I would never have been able to do when our kids were younger. Like, unless we were strictly just homeschooling and at home, but like they were in sports and dance and everything. I'm like, there's no way we've been able to do that. But, um, yeah, but we offered them whenever we were looking at, we said, Hey, if you want to come out and obviously someone we trust, that's going to do a good job. Like that, you know, it's not going to put our cows in danger of anything. And then, um, you know, Will, I offered Will the same thing. Like when he was coming out to work, I'm like, Hey, you can milk the goats and take the milk. And then actually we've since given him a day with the cow because I mean, seven days a week. And so it's so much milk and not have to have so much that you're bringing in to figure out what to do with. And I could get pigs and feed it to pigs, but at this current time, I mean, I have enough pork in the freezer. And so I would rather human families get the benefit from that excess because I've got to feed the cow either way, you know? So, yeah. So right now we milk our cow four days a week and we have, you know, like Will takes the milk one day, he milks and takes it one day a week. And then our friends take it the other. And I mean, it's awesome that now it's community being able to work together. And I mean, that's the same situation for you. So, you know, maybe consider that if you have a situation and if a daily commitment to a dairy cow feels like a lot, if you have somebody that is trustworthy, that you can work in interdependence with, you know, like, well, when I was talking to my friend, I, we were, we were actually at a wedding and he, we'd kind of been chatting about buying the, the baby, the calf, and then, you know, having it be at his house and we help, you know, pay for its food and everything. And then when we would, it was old enough, we would be in our house, which we still are not. So that wouldn't even work. But then we were at the wedding and he was like, Hey, I have an idea. Cause they weren't milking the cow. Like the baby was actually able to keep up. And I'm like, you have an A2 way Jersey grass fed cow and you're not milking it and drinking the milk. I was like, what is wrong with you? And he's like, we just don't, they had a lot. So he's like, we just don't have the time. And he's like, how about you guys buy it. And then we worked it all out. And I literally, my husband and I had kind of talked about it a little bit, but he told me how much he was selling it for. And I was like, sold. Really good deal for that type of account. So I was like, I'll make it work. And my husband doesn't have to do anything except enjoy the milk. So when you first messaged me and you're like, I bought a dairy cow and I was like, you could put a cow in your backyard, like to stay in. I've had people that are like, wait, how do you have a cow? You could not put a cow in your backyard. Like I'm telling you, it's not large. You could fit a round bell in there, but then the cow couldn't get around it. Yeah. So it's a very unique experience. I'm like, yeah, but it's, it's, it's working and it's fun. And I think it's an excellent example. I think how you were doing this is so encouraging to people who feel stuck because you've hit delay after delay. You've got your land and you're like, I'm about to have my dream. But then it was like, no, it's on the shelf for a little bit longer. But instead of hyper fixating on what you can have and don't have, you're like, well, what can I do? And that is wonderful. It was just such a gift from the Lord to be like, Hey, I know this is taking a really long time, but here's you can have the cow, your consolation. Here you go. Oh man. Yeah. Um, I, I love hearing those stories and I think they're good for other people to hear them too. And that's why I love things like the festival. Yeah. I really encourage people when they come to events like that, talk to other people, like ask people, like I am the weirdo that will ask complete stranger, like, Hey, what's your story? Yeah. Or I'll ask people, like, I don't like to ask small talk. I want to ask like, what's the best thing that's happened to you lately? Or like, what's really moved your heart and your life lately? Like, because I think that I want to know like what other people's actual human experiences and when it comes to like this dream and this lifestyle, we spend so much time with people who don't get it. Yeah. They don't even get the desire for it. Yeah. So whenever you are at least around people who have a desire for it, you've got a world of possibility of your fingers as far as conversation goes. And there's so many at the festival. I'm like, thousands of people with the desire for this, choosing the hard thing. Yeah, I know. That's why I said yesterday in my talk, I was like, nobody decided a homestead because they wanted life to be easy. No, but you know, it's, it really does. It takes slow food to a new level. Yeah. Very. Yeah. It's not like, Oh, I'm not going to go to fast food in the drive-thru window. I'm going to go to slow food and put it in the crock pot. And I'm like, no, I'm going to go to slow food. And then I'm going to have it born on the grass for two years and all the work to dispatch it. And then do all of the process and then all of the things and then cook it mindfully so that it's the best it can be. I mean, that's slow food and that's, it is the harder way. I mean, we're choosing the harder way. Well, when we raise our meat chickens where I live, it's very hot, dry, very hot. And we had, we'd gotten them at the right time, but it was unseasonably hot early. This was last year. And we bought, I think 62 meat chickens and we were going to split like 30, 30. We were like, you know, we'll have maybe a few die 30. Oh my gosh. We had, we had like, we'd put like tarps around or they actually, they did it quickly. The tarps around, they put fans, they were like misters trying to keep them as cool as possible. But I mean, you can't move 60 chickens into like, it's not like an easy feat to like move them into something cooler. You can't move them into your house. Yeah. So yeah, we, we finally were like, we just have to butcher them now. They're just dying. They're dying. We have to, so we, we got, well, I think we had 33 total at the end. Wow. And, but, but it was like, yeah, we were like, okay, we, this was definitely not, we lost quite a few of the first meat chickens we ever got because of the heat. And I'd just seen, this is regional differences. I had looked on YouTube and I watched a lot of my friends that lived like in the mountainous Appalachia area that were raising meat chickens in the summer. And I was like, oh cool. And this was when I was in Arkansas and, um, yeah, you're not getting 105 degrees in the mountainous areas of Appalachia. You know, like I'm sure there are some areas, but not, not, not where I was watching videos from. And so yeah, the first round of meat chickens that we had was like, no. So we actually only raised meat chickens in, I usually get them shipped to me in like September, August, late August. And then they're brooding through the heat, which is nice when it's really hot in the barn and you're brooding, that's great because they're babies and they need it really warm. And then you're moving them out right as the weather breaks and like, but it's still warm enough. There's still lots of insects, like it's still good for pasturing. And then we're usually aiming to process by like end October so that that way, you know, we're able to get in the freezer before the freezing. Yeah. We're definitely doing it a different time. This, this next time you raise them, we're like, that was horrible and not very cost-effective. Well, we need to cook pancakes. We do. It's my son's birthday today. He's still sleeping. And when I called Leah, I was like, Hey, I was, I was wondering if you wanted to come out and like stay with us. We're going to get that in Airbnb. And maybe you can bring a cruise because we've spent a lot of time together, but seeing as how we literally live on the opposite sides of the country, I went out to her place. Was it last year? Yeah. I was trying to figure that out the other day. Um, and I shot a video with her and her, it was her mom's birthday. Which looks so much worse now. It's so bad. I'm sorry, mom. She won't care. She was a girl. She understands exactly. But I went out there, but we've spent a lot of time together over the years of our friendship, but from the opposite sides of the country. And so this is our first time for our kids to be together and it's been good. I think they were playing last night. I don't know how long they played for. Jeremiah stayed up with him and I was like, I need to go to sleep. Cause I was literally like, it was like 10 o'clock and I just could hardly keep my eyes open. And I was like, I really need to go to sleep. So he stayed up with the kids to make sure they did not stay up insanely late. But, um, but yeah, so yeah, it's Cruz's birthday. So we're going to make pancakes for breakfast and then we're going to go do day two of the festival. Yep. But I just wanted to make sure I got a video for y'all. Thanks for hanging out with us today. Thanks for joining. We bless you until next time.