Episode 134: Homesteading in the Southern Hemisphere with Living Traditions in Australia

INTRODUCTION & WELCOME

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Homestead Education Podcast. Today, I have Stephanie Skilbeck. Did I say that right? Yeah, that’s right.
And she is joining us from Australia. She reached out to me recently, and we decided that it would be such a fun podcast to talk about the differences between homesteading in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. So welcome, Stephanie.
Hi, yeah, I’m really happy to be here. I’m very excited. Yeah, I’ve been excited all day.
I’ve been like telling everybody how excited I was when I was running errands in town. Sorry, I live with my parents. So I was like, Mom and Dad, can I use the house? I can do it.
I love it. Well, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about yourself and your homestead? Yes. So we are in the southwest of Western Australia.
So we’re right down the bottom of the country. And yeah, we’ve got 10 acres here. We’re about 10 minutes from the closest town, which has a population of about 3000 people.
So it’s fairly small. We’re two and a half hours from the city. So we’re not that far out, but it’s still… Yeah, that’s not bad.
It’s the most rural of all the states, though. So WA is a massive state, and it has like the smallest city. So we say a city, but it’s like when you look at the rest of the country, it’s very small comparatively.
I definitely understand that. I’m from North Idaho, which Idaho is just a state in America that we’re probably one of the most rural states. And then I’m 45 minutes from the closest town, which is 5,000 people.
So definitely get that.

HOMESTEADING BACKGROUNDS

So how long have you been homesteading? We’ve been here for two years. Before that, we were living in suburbia, so pretty much two years.
But I’ve always had an interest in farming and doing things more alternatively. And I’ve always been into more natural medicine and cooking from scratch. I had my mom, the way that she brought us up was, she was making spelt bread in the 90s.
So we were like the only people eating that. And we’re like, what is that weird stuff? So it’s just kind of been the lifestyle that we’ve had. Yeah.
You know, I grew up, like my dad was a hunting guide and my mom was a taxidermist. Yeah. And so like people would come to our house and be like, so what creature are we eating tonight? I’ve listened to your episodes about your dad hunting.
It sounds like it was a really interesting upbringing. It was, you know, I always, I kind of joke that he would have been like an original YouTuber if he passed away because he would, I mean, he videoed everything. Like there are thousands of hours of VHS tapes of him hunting pigs in the mountains.
Like it’s crazy. I keep telling my stepmom, like I want to get copies of those. That would be really cool.
I’ll just start my own YouTube channel of my dad’s hunting. You could, you could. Absolutely.
Yeah. The language probably wouldn’t be okay. Oh yeah.
You have to be very careful about that, don’t you? Getting your videos taken down. Oh, right. And there’s, yeah, there’s stuff.
Pig hunting with dogs and that type of stuff gets pretty rough. Yeah. We don’t do a lot of, it’s actually quite a good region to do pig hunting here because we don’t have many parasites and things up North.
Yeah. In the South, it’s not that much of an issue, but if you’re pig hunting up North, they eat a lot of roadkill and end up with a fairly heavy parasite load. Yeah.
Do you like the, is it the trichinosis? I don’t know that much about it. I’ve spoken to friends about it and they’ve said that pig hunting down here, it’s fine if you’re going to eat the meat. Our neighbor shot one that was on our property last year and our dog was so happy.
She ended up with this massive pig leg just for herself from this boar that we had. I love it. Cause yeah, they are so destructive.
They are. And we heard all kinds of crazy things. I don’t know if it’s one of those things when you don’t hunt and you talk to other people, they’ve always got a weird story.
So we were like, if you have pigs, like if you leave a wild boar on your land, you’ll end up with them like eating the lambs or they’ll like eat the lambs tongues and things. It needs to go. It needs to go down.
Like where I grew up, there was a lot of wild boar and then there was a lot of like sheep herders and stuff. And so, yeah, that was like an actual issue that we would, my dad and us would get paid to come in and hunt on these like sheep farms to keep, because they would come and they would just eat the like lambs and they would also, we were in wine country and they could take out like acres of vineyards in one night. Yeah, we are like a million dollar loss, you know.
Where we are, it’s all orchards. So we’re pretty lucky. Our dog, we’ve only had the one that really came up to anywhere near us so far, but our dog kept it away from the house pretty well.
And so we had one apple tree, but it would just strip and everything else pretty much touch wood has so far been okay. I’m glad you handled them. I’m let’s, you know, I miss pig hunting, but I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with pigs where I live now.
Yeah, well, I mean, I say that as I raise 350 pigs a year. I was gonna say, but I guess it’s a different thing having dealing with wild pigs compared to pigs. Or less my kids let them out and they come root up my entire yard like every year.
We are never going to have good grass. Yeah, you kind of have to let that one go. We’ve got the chickens and they just put that many holes in the grass as it is.
I’m newly sprained my ankle the other day, just walking through a hole and not paying attention when I was walking. Oh man. So and you, what else do you guys have on your homestead? At the moment, we’ve just got like 40 chickens, a couple of sheep and some beehives.
And I would like to eventually have a cow and goats. But I know once you get into goats and pigs, you have to worry about fencing issues in there. I’d be more intense with that sort of thing.
Oh, goats are liquid. If you don’t have watertight fencing, they get out. I know, I’ve got friends who milk their goats and like they always end up with them just around the house or on the road or whatever else.
And I was like, I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of commitment yet. I’ll just start with the entry level goats, sheep, sorry. There was this time, I was like seven months pregnant and I’m chasing this goat that’s like gonna kid any day.
And I’m trying to get her into a pen and I’m waddling after her to try to catch her. And she scales like a six foot fence. I was like, you know what? Let the coyotes eat your baby.
I don’t care. I get that way with our animals as well. We had, we actually have never had an eagle here, but we had a wedge tail eagle that was circling our baby chicks yesterday.
And like, there’s just one sitting in the middle of the grass and I’m like, the rest of them are all hiding. What are you doing? Like, do you want to be eaten at some point? You kind of like, nature’s gonna have to deal with that one. You’re like survival of the fittest.
It is. Eventually it does get, you’ll have a, you’ll have a stronger flock for letting that one get eaten. Yeah, probably.
We have, I think about 20 babies, chicks at the moment. They’re all about two months old, so they’re getting quite big, but still big enough for predators to kind of come in and get them if they’re really keen. And I think we’re going to have a couple of main roosters in there.
Cause I’ve got a couple of that are already starting to like, they get a little bit funny when you come up and, or they’ll come and peck my feet and stuff. I’m like, you’re bookmarked to go in the pot, buddy. You better watch yourself.
I have like a scar on my foot because, well, I’ll never learn. I always farm with sandals on. Me too.
Me too. It’s just one of those things. I was shoveling mulch yesterday, a whole trailer load in songs.
I grew up in California, even in the dead of winter, it was only like, you know, 50 degrees. You could still get away with sandals if you really wanted to. Yeah.
I can’t do that here right now. I think there’s a foot of snow outside. Yeah.
You don’t want to lose toes doing that. But like, I’ve had a whole, like we were loading up fair pigs one time and one of them fell back out and landed on my foot and I almost lost my toenail. And I was like, I’ll learn my lesson one of these days, but today’s not that day.
No, no. Yeah.

WEATHER & SEASONS NORTH VS SOUTH

So weather wise, like I’m talking about, you know, we have a foot of snow, but it’s summer, right? It is.
It’s beautiful out there at the moment. I don’t know if you can see that. Oh yeah.
So yeah, definitely my friends that watch YouTube come see how beautiful her warmth is outside. Yeah. So at the moment, our hottest days are about 42 degrees, which I looked it up, that gets up to like 104 Fahrenheit for you guys.
So it gets quite warm. We’re half an hour inland. And so we’re usually a bit warmer than a couple of degrees warmer than it is on the coast.
Okay. And you know, when we were chatting, I was like, Hmm, I wonder where she’s at in Australia. And then you said like down in southwestern, I was like, you know, and I’m sure you guys get this a lot when you like, learn, like, listen to things in America and stuff.
Yeah. I, to what they portray that area of Australia to us is that that is like the extreme backwards. Like, it kind of does get that.
I’m like, I’m like, I’m imagining like Crocodile Dundee and the Aborigines like running around. No. So the Aboriginal people make up like 1% of the population in Australia.
That’s kind of a bummer. I was like, hoping they had. Yeah.
The genocide here was awful. Really, really bad. So we had that here too.
So yeah. Yeah. So there is not that many of them around up north, you get a lot more, but down in the especially, there’s not a huge Indigenous population here.
Yeah. Oh, that’s, that’s like a, that’s a bummer. Like I was kind of joking about it, but like, that’s, that’s a bummer that, you know, yeah.
Yeah. It’s funny though, because we also have really beautiful wine country down here. And like, there’s some beautiful wineries and it’s quite like in WA, the southwest is kind of the tourist section of the state.
So we have like really beautiful beaches and surfing. And so it’s kind of known for that. If you come here, I don’t, yeah, as you said, we’re kind of known as quite backwater and yeah.
You know what though, if I ever do come to Australia, I have no interest in going to Sydney. So like zero. They’re actually putting an airport in an hour from us.
So yeah, you might be able to. You know, my dad always told my sister and I that he would take us to Australia when we both graduated from high school, which we’re nine years apart. So that was a big, you know, and then it never happened.
And we still like, even though my dad’s passed away at this point, my sister and I are exact opposites. Like she lives in San Francisco and has like short black dyed hair. And I live in the backwoods of Idaho, like two totally different people, but we still joke that one day we’re going to go to Australia together.
Oh, that would be lovely. You definitely have to come and see our little slice of heaven here. Right? Yeah.

WINTERS & CLIMATE COMPARISONS

So, you know, we were like, we were talking about the weather, like what is it like in the winter there? Like, do you guys have cold winters or? We get just down to freezing. So we get like frost on the ground and that’s about it. And we maybe get, I don’t know, out of, we might get a week’s worth of that spread out over the whole winter kind of thing.
So it’s not a lot, but for us, we’re like, it’s awful. It’s freezing here. And I’m like, we don’t even get snow.
I really shouldn’t complain about the cold. You know, like I said, grew up in California. So even in the mountains there, it just rained.
And I said, it’s down to 50 degrees. I guess that’s, do you subtract or add 32 or whatever it is to equal where you guys are? So I Googled it because I was like, we get to 40 here and Google told me it’s 104 Fahrenheit. So what’s that? 60, 64 different? That seems odd.
I should know this, but you know, in the moment I’m like, uh. Soon as you put a camera in front of you, you can’t remember. And I have no problem Googling right in the middle.
It’s the 32 degree difference. Oh, okay. Yeah.
That’s what I was thinking. So if it’s zero for you guys, it’s 32 for us. Yeah.
Okay. So, yeah, when I was saying it was like 50 degrees for us in the winter in California, that would be like 20 degrees for you. Yeah.
Okay. So we get a bit colder than that here. Yeah.
It’s depends how South you go. Cause if you head down to Albany, which is four hours from us, they will get significantly colder than us, but probably they occasionally get snow maybe every like five years ish. They’ll get like, it’ll be on the news.
It’d be like, Oh my gosh, there was snow because it’s such a rare occurrence for us. Oh, that’s funny. I mean, like I said, I grew up in a place where there wasn’t a lot of snow, but now I live literally a thousand feet from the Canadian border.
So, yeah. Which is why I was like, I should know the difference. Like, but yeah.

PREDATORS, SNAKES & SPIDERS

So one of the things we’ve talked about is the type of predators that we deal with. And we know the pigs that they’re deaf. A lot of people don’t see pigs as predators, but they absolutely are.
I actually did my college thesis paper on wild pig depredation. So a little bit of a, like my passion there, but yeah.
You know, we see a lot of pictures of some crazy things from Australia. Now we have to worry about moose up here and they’re a little scary, but I think I’d rather deal with a moose than a giant spider. So I don’t know, but it’s, what do you guys have there? It’s funny because when you live with it, you don’t really think about it, but we had, I saw this bit, this spot. So redbacks are quite venomous.
So if I was stung, I’m bitten by one, I’d probably go to hospital. I would be okay, but it would be not a fun experience. That’s like kind of Black Widows for us.
Yeah. But if one of my kids was bitten by one, that would probably be it for them. It’s quite severe for children.
And my daughter’s like, mom, there’s a huge redback, which is like, a big one is a bit bigger than kind of my thumbnail, like it’s body kind of thing. So they’re not massive spiders, but that’s considered a big one. So they are around, we do see them and they are just a part of your life.
We’ve had an increase in snakes this year. I don’t know, some people were talking about it, but I was on Facebook. I was like, what is happening? There’s so many more snakes.
And some people in our area were saying that they were saying like two or three daily of like quite venomous snakes. And we saw a couple in one week during spring. And I was like, we saw two the entire year from spring through to autumn last year.
That’s kind of interesting. Cause like, we had years like that when I grew up in California, we had a lot of rattlesnakes and we had to really watch that. And they’re very venomous.
I mean, it’s one of those ones where you might survive it. You might not for any. Yeah.
And if you get bitten by them, you want to get to hospital as soon as possible. Yeah. Whereas where I’m at in Idaho now, we only have like garden snakes that literally my kids go out there and play with them.
My biggest concern is like having salmonella on their hands. I’m like, make sure you wash your hands after you’re playing with the snake. And I saw a lot this year.
And I was like, the California girl is never coming out of me. Cause I see one going through the grass and I’m jumping back 10 feet. And the kids are like, they see it and they run towards it.
And I’m like, my natural reaction is just to get away. Yeah. My youngest is two and we went for a walk and he saw one and I was holding him and he was like, touch cuddle.
And I’m like, no, thank you. Please, please. No, I was like, how do you snake train a two-year-old? Yeah.
There’s too many venomous snakes around here to worry about that. My kids have brought snakes in to show me in bed. I was like, no.
That’s an outside toy. They think like one time they brought me a piglet in bed. I was like, why? They’re like, we wanted to show you the sow farrowed.
I was like, I would have been great with a picture. That yeah. Especially when our barn is like a couple hundred yards away from the house up a hill.
Like they had to put some effort in to get this piglet down to the bedroom. Definitely would have been easier to take a photo. Yeah.
But you know, farm kids are different. They are. They are.

RAISING KIDS RURALLY & HOMESCHOOLING

I’m very grateful that we get to raise our kids out here. Cause I look at some of the issues in just even just kids living in town or friends that we know. And I was like, wow, that’s just not something that we have to deal with.
There’s so many differences in it. So you homeschool too, right? Yeah. I homeschool.
So my oldest is eight and then I have a six-year-old and then my two-year-old as well. So not quite homeschooling him yet, but he’s getting the idea of it. They think they are.
But he does. He’s like when he wants to do his colouring in when the big kids are doing their schoolwork. Yep.
Gotta love it. So what are the homeschool laws like there? So at the moment the system’s really overrun since COVID. A lot of people call their kids out of school.
And so I think that the number of homeschool kids has like doubled or quadrupled or something. And that’s how it is in the States too. Yeah.
Yeah. So they would usually do like a six, every six to 12 months, someone will come out and check up on how you’re doing and see what progress you’ve made. And so I think that that’s gone out to, some people have said that they haven’t had a visit in like two years, which is kind of nice.
They don’t, they don’t do anything if you don’t follow it up. So it’s just whenever the moderator can come out and check what you guys have done. So is that a countrywide law or is it different by states? It might be different by states.
I’m not actually sure. I think, I think it’s Australia wide there, but that’s how it is here in WA. Okay.
So here it’s, it’s legal to homeschool in all state or as a country it’s legal to homeschool. Yeah. But every state has different laws.
So like some states you have to prove that you’re doing, you know, 50 hours a week or something. I don’t even know. And maybe a week’s a bit much, but it’s like 600 a year or something.
Yeah. And it has to be like certain number of hours of core work and you have to like keep track of everything where then some states they don’t really keep track, but you have to school through like a charter or a co-op type where you’re registered with someone. Right.
Okay. So we just have to prove progress. So you have to be able to show like that your child has gone from, I don’t know, only been out doing the ADCs to then being able to read and like what level that they can write out.
And they just want to say some sort of visible progress. You don’t like, there’s not really any follow-up if they’re not exactly in at the level of whatever grade that they would normally be at at school. It’s okay if they’re a bit behind or they’re a bit ahead, they don’t really mind as long as they can see progress.
And I think that’s Australia-wide. That’s good. I mean, like then there’s some states that do like, you have to do state testing like every other year or something.
And then there’s states like the state I’m in, you don’t even have to let anyone know you’re homeschooling your kids. And the law is you like, quote, should teach your kids ages six from 16, the core subjects. That’s nice.
We have set subjects that we’re supposed to teach. So we’ve kind of been doing a bit more of an unschooling kind of style to start with. And then I’ve been, so we only really started off, I am more like math science brain.
So that’s kind of what I started with, the kids. And then we started doing English and then we’ll incorporate more science and you’re supposed to teach a second language as well. So we’re just slowly adding those things in.
You know, I find with the little kids, the unschooling just makes more sense anyways. It does. For example, with my seven-year-old son, letters made no sense to him, but numbers super made sense.
So he’s like grades ahead in his math because that’s what he wants to do. And so now we’re catching up with the English and he’s good with it. So we’re kind of similar with that.
Like I found that my older two just found numbers and maths just easier. So I was like, right, that works for me because that’s how I work as well. Right.
Yeah. My kids were actually, they saw, I was telling someone about the homeschool laws in Idaho and my kids are like, oh, we’re 16 now. Does that mean we don’t have to do school next year? I was like, Idaho law also lets me spank you.
So you do what mom does. Yeah. I may not legally have to teach you, but you legally have to listen to me.
So they were like, ah, darn, they don’t mind school. They’re like super college bound kids. They were just giving me a hard time.
But honestly, our oldest son, he’s almost 20 at 15. He was like, I can’t do this anymore. This is not for me.
My husband and I were frustrated. I think I remember you saying that he went and did an apprenticeship. Mm hmm.
And he’s doing great now. So yeah, I think it’s just each child, you just have to gauge each child where they’re at. Yeah.
They’re all different. Sorry. I mean, I’ve listened, I’ve heard you talk about it in past podcasts, not when we were chatting today.
Yeah, it happens. You know, people come in at like, ask about my children at conferences and I’m like, do I? Oh, nope. I forget.
I have a podcast. Yeah, I know. It would be weird because I’m like, I feel like I know so much about you, but it’s funny because we’ve never met or never really spoken face to face before.
No, I love it. It’s fun.

FOOD FREEDOM LAWS & RAW MILK

So one thing that we struggle a lot with here in the States is our food freedom laws.
Do you guys like, you know, things like raw milk or selling cottage foods or being able to sell meat and things like that? So it is illegal to sell raw milk for human consumption, but there are some workarounds that people have found. They sell it as bath milk or as pet milk. And so they’ll sell it in some of the grocery stores, not so much down here, but up in the city they will.
And so you can still get it that way and it’s becoming more popular. So I can see that law changing in the next few years. I think it was just one of those outdated laws that just hasn’t been updated.
Now it’s becoming quite popular, but I can see it changing. Yeah. We have the same thing where it’s like a spice state can choose.
So there’s some States that they don’t care. There’s States like where I am, that’s a little bit more lax, but I do have to be registered with the state to sell my milk. And then there’s States where it is completely illegal, but they have the workarounds too.
Like you can do herd shares where people, you know, pay $20 a month to be a part owner of a cow. And then they get milk that way, or it’s sold as pet milk only, wink, wink, you know. But, you know, we, you know, I don’t know how much you guys hear in other areas.
We just voted in an administration that’s really big on food freedom laws and things like that. So I think we’re going to see a lot more changes. Oh yeah.

POLITICS, MEDIA & CULTURE COMPARISONS

Australia has really followed what’s happened in the American election. So we’ve all been watching that. Yeah.
We kind of follow whatever lead you guys take like politically and that sort of thing. And the economy, whatever your economy is doing, we kind of think it’s okay. Yeah.
And whatever kind of laws you guys bring in become a bit more popular. Like we’ve got our election early next year, probably. And so you can see that our major parties are now starting to like, they can see that Trump has what he’s doing is quite popular.
And so they’re kind of changing gears and trying to bring in more aligned with what he was doing. That’s interesting to hear because, so we’re having a little bit of a media issue here, which is one of the things that Trump is trying to change in that the legacy media is kind of what they refer to it as. If you watch the news here, every single news site is going to tell you that the entire country hates Trump.
And that the only people that like him are uneducated, backwards people. There’s been things like our current vice president Kamala has came out and said, like, people who vote for Trump live so backwards, they don’t even own printers. I’m like- He actually kind of had it really similar here.
We’ve got, I listened to an Australian politics podcast. I don’t really follow the news part from that, but they were talking about it and they’re like, yeah, he must’ve just got really lucky. He like won by a landslide, but yeah, that’s cool.
So yeah, it’s a very similar narrative here that, oh, it couldn’t possibly have been because people actually wanted the change that he is talking about bringing in. And it’s really, I mean, yeah, there’s definitely people who are not for him. I mean, it’s like, I live in a county that when you drive into our county, there’s a giant sign that says, welcome to Trump country.
We believe in, yeah, we believe in God, guns, and the Badgers, which is our football teams. Love that. Yeah.
I was watching a video and the line really stuck with me. It was like, govern me harder, daddy. And I was like, that as like what Australians want.
And I was like, it kind of is, we kind of want to be told what to do as a general rule. And I’m kind of, like, we don’t, Australians don’t actually want the level of sovereignty that someone like Trump would provide or try and encourage. We kind of want to be led, which sucks as a cultural thing is what’s happening here.
Yeah. Well, you know, the kind of the way I look at it is humans in general, can’t handle moderation. Like they don’t, they can’t be like free to choose their own.
Like, they’re not going to be moderate. And like, they’re not going to moderate, like what they eat, they’re not going to moderate what they spend, they’re not going to moderate natural resources and things like that, unless there’s a cap on it. And I actually was reading something recently, I haven’t highlighted in a book that I was reading in the market.
And basically, it was like the reason our government would, when it was put into place, you know, a couple hundred years ago, would work is because we had like the Christian base on it. So that was where our, like, our laws had to stay within that. And if you take that out, there’s nothing governing that like set of laws.
I mean, regardless of how you feel about the Christian part of it, it’s like, okay, that makes sense. You have to have a framework, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
But kind of like what Trump is, it’s not that he wants us to be totally free to do whatever we want. He wants us to set back up where the federal government isn’t running every piece of our lives. Yeah.
The states have more control over that, because then people can choose what they want more at a state level. So like, yeah, like, you know, how I was talking about with the raw milk and the homeschooling and stuff, rather than federal elections, where we have, you know, you probably have the same idea. You have cities that like, when you guys go in and vote, those cities are literally choosing for everybody else, just because of the way they’re condensed in population.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s very similar to here.
Yeah. So if we’re voting more at a state level, which is how our original population was set up, then we can make changes for how we want to live. And you can choose to live in the state you want based on whatever the laws are that you’re voting into place.
And that’s more what Trump’s trying to allow to happen rather than that federal overreach, where like, our current, you know, we had a massive hurricane here that like, there was thousands of people missing in the mountains. Like, I mean, bad, bad situation. People couldn’t get into them.
And they weren’t bringing in supplies. It was horrible. And then they were telling people, well, we can give you $750 a piece.
If you sign this form that it’s a loan, and if you don’t pay it back, we can take your property. And people are literally like, their property is gone. Like, their home is gone, everything.
And while people are having this like, outcry that we, like, you need to, we need to help these people in North Carolina and stuff. Our government sent several million dollars to Ukraine. And then like, two days later, sent several million more to Lebanon.
You know, it’s like, we’re all about humanitarian aid, but right at the moment, like, our people are literally dying. Yeah, I was listening to something else on that. And they were talking about how getting people into help.
There was like, civilians wanting to go in and help, and they were being denied access. And like, it just didn’t really make sense because the way they were setting it up meant that the people who were meant to be there to help working for the government actually made it kind of harder. It did.
And so there’s actually a lot of counties that basically got to the point where they were like, no, we don’t want government help, we will handle ourselves. And they’re bringing, you know, backhoes up and cleaning their own roads and that type of thing. They’re just like, no, we don’t want the help.
Local, like humanitarian groups and things like that were raising money, and they basically kicked the government out. Yeah. And in that, while they were trying to figure out why the government was being kicked out, there was a, like a head person in FEMA, sent out an email to everybody who was going in to help people.
And in the email, it said, like, you know, it was like, make sure you bring extra socks and make sure you’re drinking lots of water, avoid homes that have Trump signs. And like, she ended up getting fired. But it was actually like, that was in part of their news, briefing to go out and help people.
So. I think I admire that people would go in and do that, because here we kind of sit back, like, we’ll donate money or supplies. But a lot of the time, the people are not willing to go in and be like, actually, you guys making the situation worse, we’re just going to do it ourselves.
Like, that just doesn’t happen here. I would love it if it would be something that happened. But bushfires is a major one that we have to deal with here, which I think is similar with California.
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s just, I was talking to my hometown burned down like six years ago.
So yeah, neighbors been here, I think, since 96. And so she’s like, yeah, we get a bushfire. I think we’ve had like five in the time.
So that’s about every five years kind of thing that we have on quite close. And you can say there’s like a lot of trees around here that have damaged from fires. Oh, wow.

BUSHFIRES, COMMUNITY RESPONSE & RESCUES

So yeah, that’s we definitely like, before I came into the podcast, a friend of mine that lives about two hours away. Her 10 year old daughter went out looking for their dog, and went and never came back. And it had been like four hours.
And she lives in the mountain, there’s like four feet of snow there right now. I was following it online. And I was almost like I was messaging my husband at work.
I’m like, should I cancel my podcast tonight? And let me you know, load up the kids, we can’t go searching, but we could be taking food to the searchers and things like that. And I was watching it on the internet. And there was, I mean, hundreds, if not 1000s of people heading to Clark Fork.
Yeah, try to be there to find her. And right when I was coming, my husband’s like, well, you know, like, I have to work early in the morning. So let’s talk about it when I get home.
And then he sent me a message like, as I was coming in, like, sounds like they found her and she’s okay. But I mean, there was within minutes, there was like, you know, the hundreds of people just heading in, like, no questions asked. Yeah.
So we, like, a lot of it will be like, we’ll offer people will offer the government, you know, like the police or anything if they need help. And if they say no, which they usually do, then everyone will be like, Oh, well, I guess there’s nothing they could do. Yeah.
And they’ll just kind of leave it at that. Yeah, people around here, especially like in some of the areas where we live, like the more rural areas, they’re like, yeah, that’s nice that you don’t need help. I’m walking right past you.
Yeah, yeah. Whereas we just don’t have a culture here where you would do that, unfortunately. So I’m like, we’re kind of trying to be like America in ways that I don’t love, we try to do it in ways that I would really love that we could do it.
Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely I see things all the time that I’m like, Oh, that’s Yeah, that’s special. Yeah. Yeah.

SCHOOLS, CULTURE & GENDER IDEOLOGY

Like, I don’t know where you’re, well, you probably have similar views on this as well, that they’ve started putting litter boxes and things in public schools here for fairies. And I’m like, that’s fine. You guys can just be homeschooled forever.
Right? Yeah, my, my kids, they actively make fun of it. They’re, they’re actually, my teenagers helped form, like a local chapter of a group called TPUSA, which is, it’s a constitutional club for like teenagers and college students. Yeah, it does.
It’s nonpartisan, but it’s, it’s very conservative. And our kids like formed the club here. They’re the vice president and the treasurer with one of their friends who’s the president and that type of stuff.
So they all were like making fun of it. So they decided to choose whatever it is that they identified as. And so I think my daughter identifies as grilled cheese.
So yeah, my kids are definitely like, this is idiotic. We want no part of it. I’m kind of torn because I don’t think my kids really know what it is.
Yeah, my little ones don’t, but my teenagers do. Yes. So we don’t do, we do very minimal screens and stuff.
So I’m kind of like, Oh, do I just put it off until they ask me what that is? Yeah, that’s a hard one. You know? I mean, I think it’s kind of, you put it off maybe until it’s time. Yeah.
And I think you’ll know when it’s time, like, you know, we’re going to visit aunt so-and-so and her son feels this way and I need to explain this to you and, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
We haven’t had any of that so far. So yeah. It’ll be interesting when it comes up.
Yeah. It’s ridiculous. And yeah, we, it’s, you know, it’s really interesting.
We have seen a massive shift in just the last several weeks. Yeah. Where, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff like, you know, paying for underage transgender surgeries and things like that, where there was a lot of people who were like, no, this is not happening.
And it was put out into the media that we were the sick people for not allowing that or not allowing that to be allowed. And it was getting like so extreme that, I mean, it was just like, we were constantly inundated with what horrible people we were and stuff. And it was just like, this seems so weird and extreme.
Yeah. Pushing it so hard, even though it doesn’t really have the support of the people. Yeah.
And yeah, since the election, it’s like almost like everything like changed overnight. Yeah. And he hasn’t even been like sworn in yet, but it was like, all of a sudden it was like, oh, people actually don’t feel this way.
Like, okay, maybe, maybe we need to lay low for a minute. And it’s, I think it’s one of those things where I think if you have too many people who are in the middle, like politically, you’re, you know, keep people towards the middle, but we’ve had people so far one direction that now that we have someone so far the other direction, we’re going to start to see it come back to middle again. And that’s where we need to be.
Yeah. Just let that pendulum swing and it’ll hopefully come back. And that’s where we’re at right now.
And I think that that’s what people are excited about is he’s going to just kind of pull us out of this like weird bubble we’ve been in for the last few years. Yeah. I think that we find it here as well, because when I actually have conversations with people, they aren’t really that for the fairies and the transgender stuff, but you see it in the media and it’s very hard here as well.
But I think people more think that it’s more popular than it is. So therefore they are more likely to not say anything because they don’t want to upset people, but it’s actually the minority who feel that way. Yeah.
And I think what it ends up doing is like when kids are in public school, it’s like, you know, junior high, high school are really hard years. It doesn’t matter who you are. Those are hard and confusing years.
And when they make things like that, something that is more acceptable, those who are, I don’t even want to say that they’re confused gender wise, they’re just confused because it’s confusing being a teenager. Yeah. And they’re confused as a teenager, they’re confused in life there.
And maybe they’re having a hard time making friends or a hard time getting a date to prom or whatever it is. And they’re like, oh, maybe people will accept me more if I’m a furry because that’s the popular thing to do. And I think that we end up having more of a push towards that.
And we’re starting to see more people speak out here, especially in the transgender realm that they’re like, being on those, like pre-buttery blockers and stuff have literally ruined my life. Like if you’re doing this to children, like this is abusive. But I mean, it’s interesting to me that we talk about the hormone imbalances can cause cancer and they’re prescribing hormones.
And I’m like, um, guys, it is like, yeah, it’s very strange what’s happening. So I’m excited to see what changes or what things are going to be stopped over the next few years. And, you know, especially someone who’s in this, like we’re in the homesteader realm where, you know, things like us selling our milk and meat and things like that, that’s literally, that’s our income, you know? And I struggle because there’s only one, um, plant locally that butchers meat under like federal law.
And that’s what I have to have to be able to sell to customers. So I can sell like whole or half hogs or whole or half steers or whatever to a customer if I, they buy the animal and then it can go to a, like just a local butcher. And it’s just like a state, um, inspected butcher.
Cause technically they’re taking their own animal. They may never see that animal. I take it straight to the butcher, you know? But if I want to sell like where people come to my house and, you know, buy two pounds of sausage, or if I’m shipping out like a box of meat or something, I have to have it done at a federally inspected plant.
And one of the laws that they’re trying to get in, like as soon as they go into office is something called the prime act, which makes it where the individual States can decide if they accept a state, um, inspected butcher to be able to sell retail cuts. Yeah. Okay.

BUTCHERING, MEAT LAWS & PROCESSING

So for that, like right now I have pigs that are way heavier than they should be because I couldn’t get into my local federal butcher for like, I literally took pigs in and was like, okay, go ahead and schedule me for next month. And they were like, it’s going to be like two and a half months. We’re kind of having a similar issue here that there’s, there’s, NWI, DBC is the big meat processor that owns a lot of the abattoirs.
And so we’re finding at the moment that, um, they were trying to have the laws change. Oh, sorry. I think that they, because they have such a monopoly, they were trying to change their policies that, um, you couldn’t get in if you only had one or two animals basically.
So, um, Hunters basically have to process all their own meat because it’s almost impossible because we eat, um, some of the Hunters will eat, um, do kangaroo mate here. And, um, there’s like one facility in the whole state, I think that will actually process it for them. Oh, wow.
I think that that’s only for animal consumption. I don’t even think that’s for human consumption. And so you basically just do it yourself or you don’t do it kind of thing.
Cause here at the moment, it’s so ridiculous. Um, we will cull kangaroos because otherwise we have a massive problem. Like the last event I had in my car was because one ran in front of, um, ran in front of it.
Like, I think they’re as dumb as deer. You guys have a problem with deer just running in front of your cars, right? Oh yeah. Yeah.
The kangaroos are just as bad. They’re just like, it’s like, they want to be hit almost. So, um, we actually got hit by an elk one night.
Like we were driving on New Year’s Eve and this, you know, 1500 pound animal just slams into the side of our truck. Into the side as well. It’s like, are you paying attention to where you’re going? How do you not just walk into trees? Yeah.
Or I hit a whole herd of deer one night. Like I think there was like 13 in the group. Yeah.
My poor truck. I know my car’s the same. It’s had a pretty hard life, but, um, yeah.
So we cull them because we, otherwise we just have a massive, massive issue with them. And so they just leave, like they can’t do anything with those kangaroos most of the time. Like sometimes they will get taken to be turned into, um, dog meat, which is really annoying because it’s really lean.
So I can’t even feed it to my dog without also mixing it with something because otherwise it’s too lean for her. But, um, like, I was like, I would eat that meat, but it’s such a shame that there’s just no kind of way to have that supply chain set up in our state. So when we’ve been in a struggle, like, um, in Idaho, if somebody hits a deer, they can salvage it.
Like they can, they just, a lot of people just take it and don’t say anything, but you can also, you know, if like an elk or a moose or something larger was hit and law enforcement is involved because there’s like a, you know, injury or the wreck or something, then you can file a salvage permit, which is basically just letting the state know that you’re taking that meat. Yeah. Okay.
And so that’s really nice, you know, because if you or like our neighbors have depredation permits for elk, which is if they get into the hay, they can, um, kill up to like five a year or something. Yeah. So like one night we got a phone call, like, do you want a cow elk? And our family went and picked up like a 1200 pound cow elk and processed it in three days, like just in our kitchen, you know, which is wonderful.
But yeah, if we didn’t know how to process that meat, not being able to take that into a, would be really hard. And, you know, we have the small butchers, which they’ll take, they actually, they’ll stop. Like, I know that from like October 1st through the middle of November, I’m not going to be able to get a butcher date for a pig because everybody’s taking deer meat to process.
And that’s, you know, that’s just what it’s like living rurally. But we have, um, we’ve got, um, mobile butchers. So we’ll, I don’t know if you have that set up as well, where, um, they have like a trailer with a cool room on the back.
And, um, so you can organize one, but they’re booked out for like six weeks in advance. So you really have to know when you’re going to be butchering and because they’re like those. Yeah.
But again, we can’t sell that meat. No, we can’t sell it either. That’s just for personal use.
And, um, which is where that loophole is that I can sell an alive animal to someone and then have the mobile butcher come. Cause then that person has made the choice, but what’s the difference between, okay. I made the choice to buy from a farmer.
And just because there was a vet on site makes it that much different. Like you’ve already made that choice. Yeah.
Yeah. Um, we find it’s really frustrating with, um, the mobile butchers though, because quite often they’re so busy that they can’t hang the meat for more than a day or two. And so, um, yeah, so it’s like, we were going to go halves in a cow with a friend and they’re like, okay, but it’s, it’s going to be a Jersey and it’s only been hung for two days.
And I’m like, half a cow’s worth of meat that’s only been hung for two days. I think I’m okay. Thanks.
Yeah. And a Jersey too. Like they’re not going to have like the same fat and stuff as like an Ingus and they’re not having them not hung and aged.
That’s going to be some chewy meat. I know. I was like all of that, like half a cow’s worth just in the slow cooker.
No, thank you. So that’s another issue that we find is just that you just can’t find, they just don’t have the space to hang it for an adequate amount of time, which is really frustrating. Yeah.
That’s a bummer. And we even, we have a walk-in cooler on our property, but it’s down right now. And I’m like, we have to get it fixed because like, even like we do most of our, we like for personal use, we butcher all of our own pigs because that’s like, that’s easy.
We can do that in a weekend, you know? Yeah. If we need extra help, we’ll invite somebody and send them home with some sausage or something, but we don’t do. Huh? Yeah.
I want to live close to you guys. Right. Hey, I am, you know, even today, like I had a friend, she wanted to buy five dozen eggs and I am like overrun with milk right now.
And so I was like, I was like, okay, your five dozen eggs comes with a half a gallon of milk, which is worth almost as much as the five dozen eggs. Like Merry Christmas. Yeah.
I mean, you’ve got to do it sometimes when you just have so much that you just can’t get through. Right. But I’ve actually, with local people, I’ve traded like half hogs for podcast editing and things like that.
Oh, I love that. That’s really nice. We helped some friends butchered their sheep.
So, cause I just wanted the experience. I hadn’t done it myself before. And so we got like half a shape and we helped butcher it.
And you know, it’s nice because you can see exactly where it’s been raised as well. And it’s just a nice way to get more involved with your community and people who are like-minded as well. That, yeah, that’s awesome.

TRADITIONAL SKILLS, COMMUNITY & CLASSES

I think, I wish more people did that because like they can’t, they joke and call them like old-fashioned hog butcherings. And it’s, you’ll have several families over, but you’ll butcher several pigs that day. And the majority of the meat will go to the family who’s hosting it because that’s their bread and butter.
But then they send stuff home with everybody and everybody gets food and the kids are learning new skills. And I wish there was more of those types of things like that, like more socially acceptable, because it’s not that I couldn’t invite all my friends up for something like that. They’d be here in a heartbeat.
But I’d love to kind of like open it up to like maybe extended friends, you know, and be like, Hey, we’re having a full day, like come barbecue with us and stuff. But it gets a little- We see, sorry. We see some events like that, but it’s mostly paid stuff.
Like I know some people who do a goose day every day, every year. And so they’ll go through and they’ll slaughter whatever geese that they’re going to be using and you pay to like slaughter one goose. And that’ll be the one that you take home kind of thing.
That’s, we’re going to actually start doing chicken classes like that in the spring because it’s, yeah, we need a septic tank to be able to butcher chickens to sell as retail, which we’re working on it, but this is how we’re going to save money for it is we’re going to host classes and, but we’re going to do it, you know, like you can come up like, you know, for a hundred bucks and we teach you how to do it. We feed you lunch. The kids are welcome to come.
And then you get to take home two chickens with you, which if you buy chickens from local, they’re $30 a piece anyways. So, yeah. And so that, and you know, it just, it covers our costs and, you know, gives us a little extra money.
They learn a full skill. The kids get a full day out of it. And we kind of, we have all the butchering equipment.
So we always encourage like the teenagers to come and help with the butchering equipment. And we make a whole thing. And so that’s what we’re going to be doing is starting to offer the chicken butchering days, like not just classes, like come be a part of the farm, you know.
Yeah. That’s really nice. We’re seeing a little bit more of that happening here.
Like, again, I feel like after COVID all the homesteading culture became a bit more popular and people were more into it. Or maybe that’s just because I’m following only like a lot. No, it definitely got more popular here too.
So, you know, I joke that we, that I grew up as a homestead kid. And, but really, I grew up on a ranch, you know, but that was same idea is we ate everything we killed and we built everything ourselves and stuff. But we were more, my dad was like a rodeo cowboy.
Yeah. So we were more ranching than we were homesteading. But this is just normal.
I want to hear more podcasts about your daddy since so interesting, hunting and rodeo. Right. He was a very interesting man.
Yeah. He also, he was like dirt floor poor. Yeah.
Like literally dirt floor poor, like didn’t even have a pair of shoes till he was 13. Yeah. He hitchhiked across the United States at 13 years old.
And by the time I was born, when he was 40, he owned three shipyards down the West coast. That’s so crazy. Right.
It’s amazing. And I’ve been listening to, because I would really love to build my business as well. And so I’ve been listening to a lot of the entrepreneur stuff and they reckon it misses a generation generation quite often because like the people who come from that, they don’t necessarily teach that skill to their kids because they just want their kids to have the best life.
But they don’t realize that you kind of need a little bit of that hard work to then learn those skills. Otherwise they don’t pick it up as naturally. Yep.

FAMILY BUSINESS, WORK ETHIC & TEEN JOBS

That was one thing I always really appreciated about my dad is even if it was just something little, like I wanted money to go to the movies, I had to work for it. Yeah.
Or even like he, he bought me a truck when I was 16, but I had to like work all summer for him, like either in the shipyard or on the ranch. Yeah. Um, I was, cause from in Australia, it’s, you have to be 14 and nine months to have like an official job or like that you can then, um, set up. We have our tax file number, which I think is similar to like your social security, um, or similar like that.
So it’s just, if you’re working, that’s what you have. And, um, so I started it pretty much as soon as I was 14 and nine months and was always working from then. And my parents, my parents were similar.
They, um, built their business and they both came from being quite poor as well. My mom, um, she had her brother pass away when he was quite, when he was four and then her dad broke his back. And so it was like, they just finished paying off one expense when the next thing happened.
And it just was like her whole childhood was very, very, um, yeah. So then they built a really successful business. And, um, yeah, I think that they were the same.
They were like, you need to work for it. You need to, you know, like, we’re not just going to hand everything to you. And, um, you know, all of my friends had iPads and things and, um, 96 or 1996 I was born.
So I was just like, all of my friends were just starting to get those sorts of things. And as I was a teenager, and I was like, we’ve got money. Why can’t I have those things? And they’re like, no, you need to work for those things.
Yeah. And I love that. Like how you said, like, you think it, you know, you see it jump a generation a lot.
And I see that too. And I tell people about my dad sometimes and I get this like glazed over look like, oh, sure, he did that, you know, because, you know, I’m like, oh, you know, he hitchhiked, he was a cowboy, he had all these businesses, he was a rancher, he was a hunting guide. And they’re like, uh-huh.
Uh-huh. And then they’re like, so what do you do? And I’m like, oh, I have a farm. I have an online business.
I, you know, like a podcast. Yeah. We get all these conferences.
I’m a homeschool mom. I teach classes. I’m a 4-H leader.
And they’re like, oh, oh, okay. Yeah. No, that sounds, you guys are just all crazy.
Yeah, pretty much. No, I think I’m probably similar to you is that I get bored really easily, that I need to do more things. And I get quite often here, I get praised for homeschooling and praised for, you know, we cook everything that we ate from scratch.
And it’s like, how do you have time with three kids? And I’m like, I don’t know, I’m still bored. I still need more things to do. I definitely feel you.

HOMESTEAD RHYTHMS, MILK & BUSY DAYS

But I do find that when you get into a groove, that these things don’t feel hard anymore. Like, I don’t feel like our life is consumed by all of this stuff we do. I just feel like it’s part of our routine.
And it’s run so smoothly. But like, right now, I need to do some dairying. And I’m like, two fridges full of milk.
And I’ve only made one batch of yogurt. And I keep saying like, I need to do this, I need to do this. And like my days, just even like tomorrow, I’m supposed to have all day.
And I was so excited. And then my oldest son called and he’s like, me and my girlfriend are coming up at like noon. And we’re gonna hang out through dinner.
And I’m like, do you want to hang out with me? Or do you just want to hang out with your siblings? Because I have stuff to do. Yeah, and I would love to get a milk cow. And I’m like, oh, he’d be so much fun.
And I’m like, you need to remember the reality of how much milk is involved in a milk cow. Because we’ve got a ewe that I think is pregnant at the moment. So I’m like, maybe I’ll just practice milking her and see how we go from there.
Because she was, I actually got her and our ram for free, someone was rehoming them. And so they came to us when they were six months old. They’re only like seven months old now.
But I think that she’s already pregnant because they’ve been running together their whole lives. So I was like, and they were bottle fed lambs. So I was like, they’re really friendly.
Hopefully I can milk her. You should follow my friend Rachel Hester. She talks all about sheep dairying.
Yeah. The whoopsie daisy farm. Yes, I think I followed her.
She has a lot of great information on that. Did she write a book about milking sheep? Yes, I’ve seen the book. I’ve been meaning to buy it.
It’s a good one. I have it here somewhere. And I’ve been looking forward to buying your book.
I heard you’re saying that you’ll bring out an audio book. Yes. Yeah, I’m waiting for the audio book.
I’m going to release it in the spring. It was just, there was a lot going on. And I was like, let me just get it out there and go from there.
But yeah, I’m excited for that one. I’m building a studio downstairs that will be more soundproof than my office right now. And like less, I have like tile floors in here and stuff.
So it works for my podcast, but I don’t want to do that with the audio book. Yeah, fair enough. And people are like, just pay someone to do it.
And I’m like, no, it needs to be my voice. Like, I think there’s just- I really like it if the author does their own voice over it. Yeah.
And actually that’s, it’s funny because Rachel just messaged me yesterday and she’s like, I lost my copy of your book. And she’s all upset. And I was like, I’ll just ship you a new one.
I’d ship you one, but Australia, I just shipped a whole set of curriculum to Australia last month and it was like $120. And the family really wanted it. So we, we made it work.
So. We’re the same. Cause we’re using the good and the beautiful curriculum.
Uh-huh. Yeah. I love that one.
And I was like, we’re just not going to have all the resources that go with it. Cause we just can’t, we’re just not going to ship. It’s not worth it.
Or maybe like once you have everybody in like order all your stuff for the year. So you’re only paying shipping one or something. And I’ve got a friend who’s got eight kids and so she uses it as well.
So I was like, let me do an order. Can I please jump in on your order? Yeah. Cause that would definitely, you’d still have a big price tag, but like overall it’s going to be cheaper.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

MILK COWS, SHEEP & FERMENTED FEED

So I just have to be smarter about it. But yeah, I think that’s a good idea with your sheep because even what we’re doing right now, we’re a family of six at home right now and we’re milking our Belfair, which she doesn’t produce very much, maybe a couple of gallons a day. And we’re still overrun because our milk permit hasn’t come in yet.
You have to get new testing every year and we got our testing done right before Christmas. And so it’s just been too many like holidays back to back. So we haven’t got our permit yet.
And so I’m just like, I said like overrun with milk. And then our Brown Swiss is going to be freshening any day now. And I’m like, I have got to get this permit.
Cause I’m literally like, my pigs are going to be happy pigs. Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.
I was like, if I plan to get a milk cab and I also need to plan to get pigs because I have no idea what I’m going to do with all this milk. Right. But if you do, when I get, when I have pigs, I take five gallon buckets with lids and you can make a huge mess.
Otherwise, huh? Did I make a huge mess of it? Otherwise? Oh, no, no. Rather than feeding them straight milk, I put the milk in the five gallon bucket and you can either just let it sit or you can put a scoop of yogurt in it and then put the lid on a couple of days and the bacteria eats all the sugar in there and then just turns it into like a pure protein, like yogurt. Oh, that’s really clever.
The pigs love it. And they get more of it because you’re not just dumping milk into a big pan. They’re getting like a solid something to eat.
So. I used to ferment all of our chicken’s grain as well, but I was like, it’s so much nicer. Just we’ve got a big 20 kilo feed in there and I just step on it and it all comes out.
And I was like, you either can ferment it or you can automate the systems. Sometimes you just got to choose what’s easier for your day to day life. You do.

REGENERATIVE PRACTICES & BALANCE

And I think that is the beauty of homesteading is, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, you have to go like full regenerative agriculture and permaculture or you’re big ag and using Roundup and blah, blah, blah. And I think that there’s like a balance to that because like, for example, we started homesteading and doing all of our own food because my husband’s liver. I’m sure you’ve heard about that if you follow the podcast.
So we’re not you know, we’re wanting to grow everything without pesticides. But we move on to our property that hadn’t been farmed in over five years. Like there was like star thistle and stuff taller than me and I’m almost six feet tall.
Like we had to do something. So we made the choice to like use Roundup and other chemicals in places that weren’t near our gardens, but we needed to build it under control. And then that was six years ago.
We haven’t used chemicals on the property since then because we haven’t needed to. Yeah. And sometimes just like getting over that hill and you need to do something to start with.
Like we because we just got quite a few new chooks, chickens, and we realized that they had scaly leg mites when we got them. And I was like, OK, so we’ll just start bathing the ones that we have and we’ll put like Vaseline on their legs and we’ll just do that every second day. And I was like, I can’t, I can’t.
We’re just getting ivermectin and just trading. Right. It’s much easier to like to keep your flock healthy using like natural practices and stuff than it is to heal them from something.
Yes. And so like our sows, when we bought like if we buy a new sow before they like come on to our property or like if they’re quarantined, they get the full gauntlet, like they’re wormed and everything. And then they go out with the group and I make sure that I do all the natural regenerative things to keep them healthy.
And then I haven’t had to worm, I haven’t had to worm a sow or a boar like that had been on the property since we first got them all. Yeah. And that will be the hope with the sheep as well.
I want to get some an energizer for the electric fencing that we’ve got. I just got some mesh fencing so that we can start regeneratively doing it with them and moving them through the paddocks and doing it that way. But for the meantime, when we first got them, they’d just been drenched and worm.
So I was like, I don’t have to worry about it for a while, which means I have some time to get our systems in place. And we’ve got really hard clay soil. So in summer, trying to get the mesh fencing in place, I have to use a mallet because I can’t just step through it.
Getting some pigs are going to help that because they’re going to tear it up and you could like, and then all their manure and you can add a little sand to it and you’ll have much softer soil. But yeah, we do that with like our pig herd. If one of them gets an abscess or something and I have to give them antibiotics, then they are tagged to not go like to my retail cuts that where somebody is going to come to the house and just buy a package of meat because then I can never had antibiotics.
Whereas if they have an abscess and I have to treat them, I’ll hold them to be like a whole hog sale. And then I can just let someone know like, this is our practices, but if I needed to, you know, treat something, I would, but they’re not given or fed antibiotics unless it’s to treat something. And then people got choice like, oh, yeah, I’m glad you helped that animal.
I’m good with that, you know? Yeah. So yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.

WRAP-UP & KEEP GROWING

Well, I think we’re about to the end of our time.
And I kind of have to laugh like how political we were in the middle. But you know what? I think, you know, I’m good with it because I think that it’s so important to talk about what people are seeing outside of the countries and that type of stuff, because it’s not very often I get to ask somebody from Australia, what are you hearing about what’s happening here? Yeah, I mean, we hear like, similar to what you’ve heard about us that like, oh, they’re just a bit backwards. And like, they don’t really know what they’re doing.
And then uneducated kind of thing. And I’m like, I think if you dig a little bit deeper, that’s not the case. But I didn’t even own a printer.
Yeah. Oh, you own a printer? So civilized. Yeah, I think I’m gonna tweet about it on my iPhone.
Yeah. Yeah. So we are.
That is what we’re hearing. But I think that it’s the same thing. There’s a lot more people who are willing to dig deeper on that and look a little bit below that surface of like what they’re hearing in the news.
And they don’t necessarily believe that that is the whole, the whole picture of that. Well, that’s great. Well, I’m so glad that you reached out because this has been such a fun chat.
And I love the just getting to kind of see both sides of it and how it’s all working out. And I definitely hope you keep in touch. Do you want to tell everyone where they can find you and follow you? And yes, I am at living traditions on Instagram.
Let me just check. I think there’s a underscore somewhere there. Same with me on the Celsius.
I know it until I don’t. So it’s living, living underscore traditions underscore. And I’m also on TikTok and Facebook.
So you can find me on any of those. And I’d love to connect with all of you. That’s wonderful.
I think that it’s really great to be able to have that those open lines of communication on what we’re all trying to do for our better health. So my favorite question for everyone before we head out is what does keep growing mean to you? Keep learning and like growing as a person more than just learning and becoming the best version of yourself you possibly can, I think. I love that.
Well, thank you so much. And we’ll hear from you soon. Perfect.
Thank you. Thank you