1KHO 695: Relearning What Ordinary People Used to Know | Staci and Jeremy Hill, The Preserver's Garden

Oh, it's a beautiful world Ain't nothing on the screen It's never gonna beat this view Oh, it's a beautiful world And I just wanna share it with I just wanna share it with you It's a beautiful world Such a beautiful world Oh Before we begin I wanna say thank you for being here Truly the 1000 hours outside podcast only exists because of listeners like you who choose to press play Today's episode is with Stacy and Jeremy Hill from Gooseberry Bridge Farm And we're talking about how much of everyday knowledge has disappeared in just a few generations There are all sorts of things ordinary people used to know How to grow food, how to preserve it, fix what breaks, make do, work with the seasons and involve kids in real life in a way that forms them This episode is about recovering the types of things that help make families resilient Especially if we feel like we've outsourced just a bit too much Quick note before we jump in Our 1000 hours outside app sale ends tomorrow It ends tomorrow and it's only 2499 for one full year Which is just a little over two dollars a month and families love it It is designed to help you close your phone and build momentum with prioritizing real life living Now is the time to join it is available on iOS and Android You'll find links in the show notes and one more thing Thank you thank you thank you for the reviews Like I've said I read each and everyone and they are so encouraging This one came in earlier this week from Melissa And the title is My Favorite Podcast on Earth She wrote I cannot say enough good things about Jenny her podcast And her 1000 hours app I've been an active listener for the past six months And it has been a game changer for me as a mom With three kids five and under plus you Alyssa Jenny's encouraging and practical conversations with her guests Have me nodding along and feeling less alone in this journey of motherhood Her app has motivated me and my boys To get outside a little more each day and she is a voice in my head When I second guess at my decision to homeschool for the first time Thank you Jenny for all your heart and all the work you do To bring childhood back to its roots Alyssa thank you I'm sending a big hello to you and your little ones All right let's get into today's conversation Marches when homeschool families start looking ahead You can almost see the finish line Spring goals end of your milestones maybe even testing around the corner And this is such an important time to reinforce key skills And build confidence before wrapping up the year If you are thinking about assessments Whether required by your state or simply the benchmarks you set for your family It's awful to have a tool that makes review simple and clear That's where IXL can really shine IXL is an award-winning online learning platform That fits seamlessly into homeschooling It offers interactive practice across math language art, science, and social studies From pre-K through 12th grade A person lives as learning for each child Keeps them engaged and gives parents clear insight into progress What stands out this time of year is a real-time feedback and progress tracking Kids get instant explanations when they miss something And parents can see exactly where growth is happening And where a little reinforcement might help It takes the guesswork out of finishing strong Making impact on your child's learning Get IXL now and 1000 hours outside listeners Can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership When they sign up today at IXL.com slash 1000 hours Visit IXL.com slash 1000 hours To get the most effective learning program out there at the best price Welcome to the 1000 hours outside park Yes, my name is Ginni Archim the founder of 1000 hours outside And there's a husband and wife team here today Which is really unique I've actually only had this a couple times They are farmers they have a new book that just came out this week That were recording so huge congratulations on launch we can know what's a busy week It is called the Preservoirs Garden How to Grow a Garden for fermenting, canning, pickling, dehydrating Freeze drying and more and also just including your children In this lifestyle the others and they are the founders of Gooseberry Bridge Farm Jeremy and Stacey Hill welcome Thanks for having us So this is like a quite the story because Stacey you didn't grow up on a farm Nope And you're like you moved all over right you've been in Hawaii and in Missouri and in Florida And so I mean you have a degree in in history and anthropology So you say people regularly ask you what happened What happened so can we kick it off there No I may have played too much organ trail What happened to the point where you are the authors of such a comprehensive book The book is really unique in the fact that it's just got all of your Photos in it and there's so many photos And so you really get you get a sense of being immersed in your world So interesting to go from having this degree in history to this Yes it is interesting Yeah it's I mean it's been like kind of a Like gradual thing but also something I've always been interested in Like even was a kid I was interested in history and not the normal like wars and battles and stuff It was um how people lived and how they Like eight food. I mean it's it's all it was something that always just was interesting to me. So sometime like 15-ish years ago I Decided we were gonna get serious about this and I'm like I want to be somebody's grandma I'm gonna know how to do all the things That was like my mindset But starting about time we had our third baby and we were still like in town. It was like 2010-ish Um and we had a garden and like all the time before that But I wasn't like really doing much with it But I mean I started all the things. I was gonna big bread from scratch and all that all the stuff It's like home-steady movement now and I didn't know that was a thing then But I'm like I want to do these things and So I started doing them and And somehow one thing led to another And here we are um and we moved out here to get more more lands We lived in town and had like a backyard that was like a nice sledding hill But not the best for gardening So we did the community garden thing for a while and we did then we did some raise beds that were like You know, it's all around one side than the other Kind of almost terrorist but not real quite Um and we started growing things like more seriously Back then, but it was still Yeah, I remember the conversation that she brought up around that time frame and it was like, you know Someday we're gonna be somebody's grandparents and we need to be able to teach them how to do things that we don't know how to do and a lot of this stuff is a lost art Our grandparents and great grandparents did this because it's how you lived. It's how you ate um So I mean it's a lifestyle thing as much as it's a Uh About I mean there's so many pros to to you know growing and preserving your own food There's monetary savings. There's healthier food. There's involving the kids But no matter what reason you pick Or a combination of reasons you pick That is I mean it's a lost art and people Everybody now if you need food you go to the grocery store and it's not that we don't go to the grocery store But we go less than we used to Right and well and people see what but a lot of the comments we get about our pantry on instagram or about how much Like why are you hoarding food and like we're not like this we we're a family of eight You people don't understand how much food they actually eat In your interesting because no one would ever say that about the grocery store exactly This looks like a grocery store. You should share that you should give it away and you have too much I'm like, but we eat it all like great. Yeah, that is your grocery store. Yeah. Yeah And people are conditioned to only having two to five days worth of food in their house, which is Crazy. I mean you go back a hundred years ago and told somebody that that's how we live they would freak out That's just that's not a it's not sustainable in a non industrialized world Which I mean granted we live in but What things can happen things can happen and plus um A lot of those foods are our pat full of preservatives and chemicals and who knows how they're grown and raised so And they're traveling the the footprint of all of that yeah food coming from far away. It's not Local I mean if it's coming from outside of our house that's Gotta be better. Yeah. It's kind of a shotgun thing. We're talking here because there's so many reasons and you kind of let us go Right, I love seeing the base. I don't know. It's not like a basement or picture cellar or whatever it is I'm like it's so cool. There's jars everywhere and it's beautiful It's very pretty all the different colors Joel Salton is a farmer. I really like and he talks about that like that You know, they don't go really to the grocery store They just what's for dinner they go to the cellar and they grab the things that we're canned We've had this cool experience. We live in Michigan And near us in Dearborn, Michigan. There's this place called Greenfield Village Which was I guess created or funded or something by Henry Ford and it's basically like this historical village You can walk around they've got like model T cars you can ride other than that and there's horse and buggy It's like a little bit stepping back in time And they have this really cool thing where there's a couple of the homes there That are from specific timeframes. So like there's one that it's called the Daggett house and it's from like the 18 sometime in the 1800s And they basically have people that are reenacting that time period so they're dressed and they have the home And they make lunch every day Every single day throughout the summer and they are using what They would have had back then. So it's like well, they had some cheeses and they had you know the asparagus Just came up but they can eat all of it Because they have to save some and it really is it's the first time that I had a really good sense of Kind of like what you're talking about like this is not hoarding This is being very wise with what's available That is not you know asparagus is going to grow for what a couple weeks Right And then that crop is done and then you're on to the next thing So it's been really neat for us to see and then they'll sit and they'll eat it and they've got you know They don't even have forks. It's like they have these different utensils and they have a they'll wheel with um Like they're making their own Fabric string whatever I think But this is how people used to live and so you wrote in this book It's called the preserver's garden that general knowledge has changed That there were things that people knew that was you know all in common people had not knowledge prior to probably the 1950s And you say that over the last several decades the food preparation has become less widely practiced And so then your only alternative is the convenience of store bought products talk about having six kids and I think a lot of people would say that's a lot to juggle sure and you know juggling Is an interesting word for it because another one of the comments that we get a lot is that we spend so much time on our food like preparing food growing food harvesting food preserving food that It's a foreign concept to a lot of people because they're used to working 40 50 60 hours a week come home open a box and dinner prep is something that takes minutes and for us or they eat out or they just eat out And for us dinner prep is something that can take hours and hours in a given day and that's okay and Well and over the whole course of the year of the growing stuff We're doing it a little bit at a time when we get to winter and we're eating off of the shelves It's the prep is minimal. Yeah, which is frustrating because that's winter when we're not busy But the whole point I was learning it on that was that It's a matter of I guess just recognizing your priorities because When you are eating for convenience you're working for somebody else and they're paying you money and you're trading that money for food The way I like to look at it is that we're skipping the middleman and we are working for the food Uh, it's just whose hours are you are you spending somebody else's are your own and involving the kids in that Yeah, it's really rewarding to see our our now seven-year-old can walk through the garden and Lead a tour and he can just point out and tell people you know This is this variety of tomato and it's better for this versus that one and and then all the steps it takes to get out on the shelf He didn't they can do all of that. Yeah, so you know while it is juggling to some extent That goes right in with homeschooling because I mean we're not I would say traditional homeschoolers curriculum based When the kids go out into the garden and can do all these things and then we can talk about how many pounds and how many bushels then to and Convert that into yields and how much salt it takes to do this Yeah, there's a lesson in everything. Yeah, I just have to look for it We can take our three younger kids are 12-10 and Seven there's some there's some birthdays happening here. Yeah, almost 13 anyway. I did it um But they can the last two years even they've they can take the the bowl of tomatoes and go full process into I don't let them like put it in the canner because they're too short to reach up there But they could do it all themselves. They know know how to do all that. Yeah, you end up with a canned short can sauce and Yeah, and they do it can do apple sauce also they've been All right, and that and I mean just completely on their own and that's just because those are two things that we do a lot of but And that is an education that is an education I say a lot the things that you're exposed to when you're young you feel you have a different level of confidence in doing them when you're older Otherwise, you're shaky and you're always shaky. You're always just a little bit like But when you have those roots inside of you it comes out in a lot of different ways I love to talk about the seasonal living that you brought up seizing Because you kind of made a face you're like well all the work's done and now it's winter But it almost seems like this is the time for resting Is different depending on where you live You know what what what people have been doing like they maybe would have been doing their sewing projects They maybe would have slept a little bit longer You know just a time togetherness around a fire or a candle at dinner. So That's also a way that people don't live today. So Jeremy you brought up You know, they work for somebody else and they buy their food and you're instead of doing that You're just working for your food That allows you to be very in touch with the seasons So can you talk about what that's like because I feel like it's probably an uncommon Experience for for most yeah You know people who live in this industrialized world Yeah, absolutely and it's also It puts you a lot more in touch with your food too um I'll say It's just I won't say food waste doesn't happen but I can assure you food waste happens a lot less here Then it doesn't have other places because you know rather than just paying an extra dollar for that food I worked for the heck yeah You know don't throw it away nothing goes in the trash can nothing We haven't picked and chicken so yeah Yeah, this book's all about produce, but I mean we do raise our own meat and You know a lot of different things beyond just produce we had to put a box around it the seasonal thing Sorry, yeah so It's like we do the nice thing about winter is that it gets darker earlier And we don't have gardens we we don't grow anything over the winter because we just it's better to just Not just go doing that It's for us for something what we do have all the animals still so we still are you know have animal care and milking and The animal care is harder in the winter because we're breaking ice and doing all this That is so true isn't that interesting? Yeah, yeah, so the animals need more and the garden needs less and then We get forced to come inside earlier because it's time it's dark at five o'clock So we're gonna just go inside and then we have all that extra time to just be Yeah, yeah, in the summer we were coming in at nine o'clock at night and eating dinner at 11 So that's us we feed the kids earlier, but it's I mean, that's our choice of how we do it It's not for everybody, but you know when I was talking about that earlier Or when Stacy mentioned it actually it was more along the lines of food prep actually takes less time for us in the winter because We're eating foods that we prepared we put the work into in the summer So you know, I make a I do most of the cooking and whenever whenever I make a big thing of Stir-fried vegetables. It's just it's on it's every meal stir-fried veggies In the summer we're chopping all the stuff and cooking it fresh In this time of year. I'm going in the pantry. I'm popping a lid on a jar adding some water and frying So it takes less time So we're using freeze-dried because we're using right veggies for the mocha Rehydrate and cook them they cook up like as if they were thawed frozen vegetables So it's yeah, it's similar to that but Yeah, so it gives you a little bit of time. There's an ebb and flow to it That's a really different like whereas everybody else's life is very static Right, I was like I've got my nine to five my nine to five my nine to five This is the day I run errands. This is the day I grocery shop It's the same right like January to December But this gives a different ebb and flow that's a really interesting. I feel like the We do a garden. We're not good at preserving and fact I don't think I've ever grown a tomato that we've actually eaten. I'm like they get eaten by the bugs I don't even know what's happening I wouldn't think we're cherry tomatoes. That's like the only thing Sometimes there's some cucumbers Only the flowers grow so I'm not quite sure what we're doing wrong, but um You know to me the winter is a time for contemplation like what did I love what would do different next year a time for really looking forward to You know the next season it gives you just a little bit of a break from it So it's that's a really beautiful and impressive and unique thing that you do is living seasonally like that This is such a fun announcement to make Woolbikes is officially the 2026 bike partner of 1,000 hours outside And if you've been around here long enough, you know that's not a casual partnership We care deeply about the tools that help families reclaim childhood and womb is doing exactly that womb is founded by two dads in a Vienna garage who simply couldn't find a bike that actually fit their kids So they built one and what makes womb different is that they don't start with engineering They start with empathy every part of the bike from the lightweight frame to the brakes Size perfectly for small hands is designed to help kids feel capable and confident in a screen dominated world Bikes are more than bikes. 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She's so good at it She's got like a basement like you with all the beautiful cans And um my kids are just like obsessed they're like we want to be like her more older I think she's like freeze dried soup Like you put in a tray and then you're just like breaking it up Yep, can you yeah we've been free for a bone broth too Yeah, can you explain i had never heard because she's like okay, there's freezing And there's dehydrating like but if you combine this freeze drying It's a whole different thing so you say it's called mainstream But i had never heard of it until i saw it at my friend britney's house last year So can you talk about i think most people would know a fermentation They know you can freeze things they know you can can Things there's a couple different kinds of canning and all the information is in the book It goes by season the book is called the preserver's garden But can you talk about the freeze drying in particular? so When we're talking about freeze drying it is a appliance So we've purchased an appliance that does this for us We actually have two of them now because we use it so heavily in the summer We've got two of them running all you all the time they're actually running now they're running yeah Are they new ish? They've been on the market in the Personal space where people can just buy them at a reasonable price for probably 10 10 to 15 years Yeah, we we got ours in 2021 20 or 21 21 early 21 like January So we had it for that whole garden season and it was a complete game changer like it that's what like launched this whole we can actually Yeah, you make enough food because we couldn't can enough things For us and and dehydrating is not as like dehydrating is good for herbs and a few other things But it it can it's not the same like if you if you dehydrate green beans you got to like cook them like Or hours and hours in a lot of water and they come out mushy green beans like come out with similar to canned ones But can you explain why you're canning? So when you can something you're When you When you're preserving food there there are basically two goals that you're trying to accomplish the first goal is to Remove and inhibit the ability for bacteria to grow because bacteria is what destroys your food When you are canning food you're doing that with heat. So you're cooking the food You're intensely kicking cooking the food and then putting it in an Environment i.e. that jar with the sealed lid where bacteria doesn't exist because of the heat you just created in its pressure canning Pressure canning just yeah water back canning is the same visit 100 we're going 100,000 feet here. Yeah, so your goal is I know but can you say why water bed because I actually I'm glad you brought that up because I would have thought well You boil it. Yeah, so I would have thought that water bath canning was the heat No water bath canning is the acid in the food. Okay. It's the level of acidity in the food is what keeps it safe the The heat the heat is seals are jar sealing your jar and There's sterilization involved if you boil it for over 10 minutes then the outside of the jar is Clean but you're not boiling it so much that the inside of the food is Okay, I'm glad you explained it so what's saving the food? Yeah, is acidity for water bath canning and For pressure canning. Okay. What were you going to say Jeremy though? There was one other thing Well in this some foods you have to pressure can like green beans because you can't make them acidic enough To unless you can them in vinegar, which is a whole not just asking It's a pickle Some people like it. That's it if you're in that sorry, you don't want to I mean lots of people do Pickle a lot of things because it's easy and it's safe But like how many pickles can you eat? Yeah, I like pickled everything It's strange about the freeze drying and why it's Yeah, Bob which is the one last question, which is you said it kind of briefly you're like we can't you said the freeze dry Was a game changer because we couldn't can enough right? Yeah, and some of the foods you don't like And we're like just not good to eat or it is not something that we enjoy eating Mushy or they're salty or they're like there's just So And you couldn't can't enough why because of space because of time because of variety Me only varieties of it was the the foods would have been limited. Okay. Yeah, like you can't can watermelon We can freeze your watermelon. Oh, and it's amazing and cantaloupe and It's like Interesting to me because I've thought okay, so we've tried to grow melons. We're so we're so bad I'm like we'll get like to you know But they're huge and I have thought before if all of these dig grow and it worked It's kind of weird because I'm like well, we would have 16 of these massive like we have one called Carolina cross or I don't Was so big because the biggest watermelon I've ever seen I'm like what would we do with these because they're all ripen pretty much around the same time And they're so big so you can okay, all right freeze dry watermelon You can also do some other things with watermelon you can make fruit leather with it and that's dehydrated So that's what I'm saying. We're jelly you can make watermelon jam and you can make watermelon lemonade concentrate and can that Which we do all the things. So that's my watermelon. Thanks. You have learned so many things You are going to be someone's grandma and they are gonna know how to do everything with watermelon I've never heard of watermelon jam. Yeah, it's like summer It's just weird sometimes, but we also have watermelon syrup and you can add that to like drink syrup or whatever. Yeah Wow, okay, so a couple years ago you hop on this freeze drying train was it like Because I my the one my friend has is like relatively expensive It's not yeah, I mean, I'm sure that the cost evens out over the time that you's in it evens out because it it's providing their food But like was it a hamming and hind like are we gonna get it? Are we not gonna get it? I thought that we were never gonna use that enough to justify the cost and his mom was pushing us like oh, you'll use it You should get it and she actually helped us with the first one because we really now it was such a game changer that you've bought a second Right. Yeah, it so once you talked about time time to can When you're canning foods, you're generally canning them Out of the field right out of the garden. Yeah, so you've got a very narrow window And in its time intensive you're standing over a stove Yeah, you're gonna get a babysitter. You can't do other things while you're doing it. Yeah with a freeze dryer your goal isn't to kill all that bacteria and heat heat Treat it you're removing the moisture which is the other primary method for Preservation preservation which we talk about in the book quite a bit Dehy it's kind of the next step above dehydration Because dehydration is all about removing moisture moisture is the conduit or the the Whatever meeting on which your bacteria grows. Yeah, so in freeze drying You just put the food in it and it goes through the whole cycle on its own and it can take eight hours to two days to So you have to put up the food but you don't Yeah, and we can also cut things prep them and put them on trays in the freezer because you can pre-freeze your food before you freeze dry it So it gives you another Way to catch up like when we just had the one freeze dryer We were filling an entire deep freeze with trays of food and then moving them to the freeze dryer as we had time because it takes There was a backlog. Yeah, it was a backlog But now that we have the two we can kind of go back and forth and And keep up because we were running out of freezer space To prep the stuff for the freeze dryer This whole thing So it really is something that is revolutionized things you wrote in the book We believe there will be a time in the not so distant future when home freeze dryers will be as common as refrigerators and microwave ovens so so when it comes out Because I I really don't know much. I'm like my friend was like I pour my soup in there I'm like what is there a lip on the tray like what's happening When it's done you said it could take eight hours it could take two days You know in the pictures that you show in the book which pictures are so great because they're just so like every day family things You got strawberries you have okra and you have beans it looks like When they come out are they what are they like just dry They're like starry phone version, but they feel like So you've had astronaut ice cream or seen it before the astronaut dude that's really all it is It's just freeze dry you can freeze dry your own ice cream and you can use dry milk Yeah Put it in a jar You can put it in a mylar bag or my lard It's easier to be airtight. Yeah, okay, and then you put the lid on and that does not have to be canned at that point It's good to go Okay, and then my friend Brittany says you just have water Yeah, if you want it rehydrated With left like the watermelon we just eat it. It's a crunchy treat. It's a snack. Yeah. Oh It's just like it's like cotton candy, but it's fruit Wow the watermelon watermelon watermelon's really fluffy. Yeah, it And the seeds get like crunchy in a way where you can just eat them So you don't need to worry about taking the seeds out But the the whole thing about the freeze dry is it's removing all of the water all of the liquid every last bit And it's not I shouldn't say it's removing the liquid. It's removing the water So think about watermelon juice. You know watermelon is just basically this spongy Thing juice holder it removes all of that juice. So all you have is the spongy But it doesn't remove the juice it removes the water and all the flavor stays So you've got a hundred percent of that flavor intensifies really intense Was it like um like It was like full of surprises. You're like you get this thing and you're like what can we put in there? Yeah Well a lot of people will get one you know you to get into one you're looking at Two to five thousand dollars of cost. I mean, they're not inexpensive, but You can justify that with what you're putting on your shelf if you can't a lot of people start a little side hustle You can freeze dry candy and you see all these people selling freeze-dried skittles. Yeah, I mean It's so easy. It's so easy and you can sell them and people buy them And you can offset the cost so there's You can also split it with somebody That's what I was thinking yeah, so rent out trays like have somebody yeah, and I'll pay you to Yeah, you freeze dryers It costs comes down on it You know, I think I do think most people are going to have one at some point Yeah, you can put left-overs on them especially the smaller models that because ours we have the bigger ones We have a large and extra large so they take up a lot of space and a lot of electricity But these are ones Um and addition to holding less but they're easier to fill so like you could take your leftovers for the week and put them in there and then you have Have those foods for later It's yeah, it's like putting them in the freezer But they're also easier to use and you can take them places. It's great for camping or traveling we went to North Carolina a couple weeks ago and stayed in a cabin and we brought all of our food And a lot of it was freeze-dried with we have food allergies too, so it's part of why we did that but Oh, yeah In the back of the day and then yeah Say a lot of money and you don't have to worry about you know contaminations with all our zins trip we did um like our freeze-dried veggies that we eat normally we did some where we cook them and then freeze-dried them Then you can just pour a little hot water in there and stir it up and it's ready to eat yeah There's no like a miracle season. It's just like instant food Or you can take those freeze-dried chips of green beans and and summer squash and all these things and dip them in hummus and it's a chips and Right and we did a lot of freeze-dried fruit for that trip too late like instead of you know packaged fruit snacks We had little little bags of apples and watermelon really good So you say the only things you can't do are chocolate honey and oil But that most of your garden produce you have tried in the freezer and it's been a success. That's like a fun adventure Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, and then figuring out how to rehydrate it as a whole another situation Because some things do better with cold water. It's some things do better with hot water and And there are some books out there that I've looked at and I we didn't see the books until after we figured all of this out for ourselves So now I'm just like no they're wrong Like there's a better way Yeah, okay, I we've spent a lot of time in this but actually I think that most people probably don't know about it And you can learn a ton about it from the book you say we also love to freeze-dried unconventional snacks like kimchi Mm-hmm. I mean wow, you know like you wouldn't even know you wouldn't even think and the fermented pickles the Wow, we because they don't last forever in a jar like yeah vinegar pickled foods they're Lactoblava and in the book we get into the kind of how it works We go through the steps of how a freeze-dried does what it does But the best the biggest thing about it is it doesn't cook the food it never gets above It depends on what you have to set the cycle, but it doesn't have to get above a hundred degrees You can turn it down to where it keeps it completely raw So you're not cooking foods so if you're doing something with probiotics in it you would turn that temperature down Well, if no knob but buttons And I keep doing this Well milk, you know you you if you milk your cow put your milk in there when it comes out and you rehydrated It's still raw milk it doesn't pasteurize it like canning wood Nothing you can't understand that you can't It's a rebel canning yeah Oh wow okay, so the book has all the information in there about how to preserve so there's dehydration salting fermentation freezing water bath canning pressure canning and Freeze-drying so all of that is in the book and you can Pick what works for you. I mean I learned a lot with just that part Spring has a way of filling up the calendar quickly Field trip sports travel co-op which are all good things But they can make it challenging to keep curriculum learning consistent March is really about maintaining momentum while life gets busy That's why having a flexible organized learning tool can make such a difference in the final stretch of the homeschool year ixl is designed to fit into your routine not complicated ixl is an award-winning online learning platform offering interactive practice in math language arts science and social studies From pre-k through 12th grade it adapts to each child's level keeps it motivated and gives parents clear visibility into progress What I especially appreciate this time of year is how simple and time-saving it is Everything is organized by grade and subject so you can jump right into exactly what your child needs Whether that's reinforcing a concept before testing or Confidently moving ahead the clear explanations and visible progress markers help kids stay encouraged as they work toward year end of goals Make an impact on your child's learning get ixl now and when thousand hours outside listeners can get an exclusive 20 percent off ixl membership We may sign up today at ixl.com slash one thousand hours visit ixl.com slash one thousand hours to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price Then you go through i mean was this just like Was it uh easy or hard to go through i mean you went through basically like every single Registrar was a garlic carrot street potatoes potato like did you like it that or was that overwhelming to you It took a long time book a the whole book writing process Would would qualify as overwhelming Sure It's like decide to share something and then you're like oh let me just inside out my brain and put it on paper Yeah, that's that was a lot But writing it together helped yeah, I mean being like it take a break and be like you're doing this now You know the way we wrote a lot of this is that she came up with the kind of the outline and the first draft and then I turned it into Sentences and paragraphs You're gonna do winter squash and all degree beans okay, so um you talk about mint mint is a plant that any gardener Kimmy any gardener feels successful. So like I said you go through The best vegetable varieties for preserving you go through herbs one of the other things not to Con the freeze drying is that you can freeze dry flowers Yep, yeah, okay, this is a reef. This reef is so pretty. This is on page 183 I was like this is such a gorgeous photo. It's like a wreath with some flowers in it. Oh Okay, are those freeze dried like what is freeze dried some flowers? So it's magical right figured that out by process of eliminate it like okay So the the flowers there was nothing no information about this back when I did it people were like oh look You can freeze dry flowers, but the petals puff up when you freeze dry them normally if you just like throw them in there They have to be soaked in water first Which is weird because you're drying them But they freeze before they dry and something about them being covered in water and fully saturated when they freeze Makes them dry looking like that And I have a couple of YouTube videos that show exactly how I do that if anybody is interested Wow Because they're pretty stacy Because it was rained and then I cut all the flowers right before rain now like wow these came out perfect A right after it rained no wait, but they were all really wet and I started soaking them and it should be pointed out to that we Yeah, part of the way that we were able to do what we do and do this full time is that we do Uh, agritourism as part of our as our home business. We we have a big flower farm. We do We let people come out and play with our farm babies We So you know, it's not just we're not just guarding 247365 Yeah, we I love that we have like like hey, I don't know what quarter acre or so of flowers What we grow so that's where to like let's preserve them too Any given point in the summer we've got 25 to 30,000 plants in the ground of just flowers And people are coming out to pick their own So when we have excess flowers out there she's picking them and we have a whole building just for dry Just full of dry flower and they're not all freeze dried. It's mainly some flowers and zignas that we freeze dry and everything else is Mostly hung dried and like a more traditional bundle than hanging and then here and You know the winter time where it farmers markets and we're selling Dry bouquets and wreaths and things like that The wreath is stunning It's so pretty and I saw that has a little tag on it So it looks like obviously something that you could sell and in the middle of the winter if you live in the north and there's snow everywhere Like some of us just talking to be about the The healing power of color and Flowers in general yeah sure and in the winter the only color is red There's like the berries and the cardinals like that's it pretty much And you don't even see that all the time so I just was so dry I mean we're covered in snow here in Michigan right now. So I'm like this is so pretty With these sunflowers. So I want to read it. I mean there's so much to learn here We've done extensive experimentation with freeze drying flowers in years and sunflowers are favorite But any flower that can be hung dry can also be freeze dried You'll get a much brighter color than with air drying and no additional steps are needed So you talk about soaking them or getting them harvesting them just after a good rain It's really cool because I mean sometimes it's so important to To cut them right because then more grow Right. Yeah, you have to keep cutting them where you don't get more flowers. Yeah, so then you have something to do with them Wow, and you can enjoy them all winter or have an entire building full of them that you're just like oh great now I have that we can barely walk through this really yeah So full It's like the flower version of the pantry Wow We do do a lot of medicinal flowers too. So they're like calendula or like calendula and I'm free and Well, I'm not a flower. It got me a meal I do a lot of camimeal which we usually I freeze dried the camimeal and And dried it and usually I just air dry it because it doesn't seem that different and once you're making tea out of it It tastes the same You really have learned a tremendous amount. It's very encouraging because it's like while someone else could start and they could learn so much as well Okay, so we talked a lot about the freeze during which is really cool because I didn't know anything about it So I'm really thankful to learn about that I love that there's this layered piece where people can come to the farm and they can interact with animal babies. It's so good for kids and To such a thrill for them There's all these layered benefits so because you're talking about an agro tourism is my favorite thing to do outside I also like being on the water, but like I also really like agro tourism I just think that and there's so many varieties of like you can go pick blueberries or you can go play the animals whatever But Along with having the opportunity for people to come and interact with your animals, you also use their poop Mm-hmm. Okay, talk about the unsung heroes of the farm Go ahead the the poop so Getting goats Waste a lot of pay They poop all over it while they're wasting it So because they just drop it they pick it up out of the hay feeder and drop it on the ground And then it's gross and they won't eat it Because that's goats for you. So we have a lot of goats So we have a lot of this pay that ends up on the ground and they poop in it and then we shovel all that out and put it on our gardens like it's And then we also have a hay Yeah, the hay and the Benure is all mixed together and it um we put it on really thick Like eight to 12 inches Wow, and it if you do that in December January is the absolute latest really for like a May garden because you wanted to have like several months to sit there and it'll Break down because the the Microbes organisms and all that are being fed by the manure and the hay and the organic matter They break it all down you dive with a whole lot of earthworms and Really nice soil under there and I mean we're in Missouri so we're In our area most people will be like yeah, we don't grow in the ground because it's all rocks But we had no other option because I couldn't grow on this scale and bring in Compost and stuff so it would be too expensive So we started doing this thick hay and letting it Break down and that built the soil above the rocks So that we were able to plant ends of the ground It's just And I couldn't have done it without all the animals In in Missouri we have in southern Missouri at least Rats that's all we have Lots rocks and when we plant our Rocks Yeah, and then we have when we dig holes for like single plants like tomatoes are like a you know bigger hole Um, dig the hole a little bit extra dump the rabbit poop in the bottom but the plant in And then you your it's all right there when those plant roots start to grow they go down and they hit that rabbit poop and I learned from this remaining Lara Cox Who I called Laura for an entire podcast episode but actually it was Lara So that's interesting But I learned that rabbit poop is cold compost and I didn't know like you can just throw it in Yep, and so is goat and sheep and I'll pack. I think I don't have any help any bad any animal that poops in a pellet. Yeah, it's safe. Oh It's cold. Yeah, it's our safe. Okay. Oh So great did you see that documentary called back to Eden? I Have heard of it, but I know okay, that's kind of what they talk about and like they'll show gardens that are like complete There's like so much rock, but if you bring in Oh like organic material it compost down and like eventually you got soil and you have things that have more water content because The whatever's on top of the soils holding in that moisture. Yeah, it helps so much. Yeah Yeah, and it was fascinating. It's like they related to the Bible It's like I was one of the best things I've ever seen. I was like jaw dropped by it It's like all the forgiveness in the land and when you think like there's nothing that you can do that there's these ways out and Anyway, okay, so let's talk about a couple of the other nitty gritty things. This is the big one weather preparedness So um, we've gotten hail and you have a picture in here about with a piece of hail next to a coin and Also, okay, have you heard this? This might make me sound like a cook, but I just read about it That they're dropping vaccines from planes. I have seen something about that. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm like Uh, you know, there's stuff coming from the sky It might be hell. It might be a rabies vaccine Yeah Yeah, I've seen post about that like not in our state so we're yeah You know, there's also flooding and there's wind and there's things to happen and and I mean that's a really tricky part I that's something that definitely freaks me out a little bit like okay, here's an example So we've got a garden our neighbors got cows while the cows got through the fence and I was like they didn't It comes stump on my garden, but they could have so there's kind of a lot to be afraid of Yeah, yeah, and that's one of the reasons we've expanded our pantry four times And added more shelving because you know, we just did it in baby steps the first time we put shelves in there It was like okay, let's have some food on the shelves Well, let's try to have a whole seasons worth of food now our benchmark is to try to have two years worth of food because If something happens if we get that hail storm in May when everything's planted and it destroys everything which we did We have that pictures from our may hail, but we had like a hail storm the day we were planting everything and I mean The part of the reason it was okay is because like I grow Twice as many plants as we need to because then we plant the garden and then I hold on to those for several more weeks and kind of give them away a little bit at a time But I mean, come on growing them all I might as well have some backups And then the other thing you can do is like with your tomato plants They grow little suckers little side branches like you can take take those off when the plants are young and root them And then you have another tomato plant so if something happens to the one One you're growing like you don't you're on out the whole season you can either replant it And I just I try to like little things like that just to safeguard our because I don't want to be You know growing all these plants from March to May and then I put them in the ground and they're instantly destroyed by one storm Which I bet hail storm we had it actually made me feel better because it was Like nickel-sized hails wasn't like math, but there was a lot. I think we had it too We had to get our we had to get our re re-roofed Yeah, it was enough to like to damage things, but so many of the plants survived And just lost a few branches and came back and and they like my cabbage looks pretty bad It could have been worse. Yeah, but it didn't completely destroy it It was nice to know that could handle a little bit. Yeah, and hail is just one thing drought Drought is a huge one because not only does it hurt your plants, but when you water your plants in a drought All of the bugs within a square mile number of square miles So they're gonna see your garden as the garden of eating and they're gonna come in and kill everything after everybody around us cuts their hay fields And then the bugs have nowhere to go so they all come visit our flowers I wouldn't have thought of that and there's a lot you're kind of up against a lot you got to be real resilient Yeah, and it's good to remember too I because this always used to bother me that that the the people that grew things like when we're thinking back in history and all that 100 years ago 150 years ago They didn't have the same pest pressure we have now with the globalization and all of that like we have all these invasive Insect that's supposed to be where we have these beetles and then are stronger right because yeah like there's there's They don't have natural enemies here. I don't have predators there All they they can take over the native stuff and And the beneficials and it's just it's a lot Like you wonder like how did those people grow all their own food? Well, they weren't dealing with all the things we're dealing with yeah That's one of the things that are being dropped Yeah, exactly Or to the centers yeah that are sucking up all the water. Yeah, I don't know that might I don't know if that's a thing either But I'm reading about it I'm seeing it too, and I'm like what is this you know there? There's one we live near a city called Celine When you're in Arbor, Michigan, and there's a city called Celine and there's like everyone is up in arms about this data center Well then they what there's like they want one in Calcass, Michigan too and everyone's up in arms in Calcass And I'm like And you keep seeing it in the rural areas that they're taking these huge pieces of land for these data centers and also the um Solar fields like the you know you'll drive by and I'll be like solar panels like there's 200,000 of them and I'm like okay Why do we need so many data centers? What is happening? Yeah, they got I'm on rolls away a little bit because I'm like everything seems fine So why would we need like all of these data centers that all of a sudden they're like wanting to put them all over the place So anyway that makes me like slightly concerned about the water, but then some people say it's recooled I don't know enough. Yeah before we did this and I quit my day job. I was nit. So don't get me started All right, but if you do know any insider information just let me know A little loop now Is huge and it's gonna it's gonna get worse and worse because that all that stuff that you're seeing is to power those back AI back ends and they're just gonna get bigger and bigger We're just seeing the very beginning of that Yeah Yes, that's something that actually I'm super interested in and Trying to keep in the know about just because of the ramifications of it and how we raise our kids But I think anything that preserves your humanity and anything that is tied to like in in the ground in person hands on activity Is got a little bit of a safety buffer Yeah, so that's right all these things are important Okay, so then talking about passing on knowledge you clearly have learned a tremendous amount So the fact that you didn't grow up in a farm and you have put out this book You're an experiment or two which you can tell right like oh well. That's what happens when you put this in there You know that that's a really cool quality and you can tell that you value that What has inspired you Like are you how do you learn are you learning from books? Are you learning from youtube? Are you learning from trial and error? Yes, we all did What is there is there meat? Let's are on the books because books take up space and we have a small house Okay, so please buy our book Make all the book fake up fame But I mean I appreciate books. I just like There's no spaking we're family of eight in it 20 300 square foot farmhouse We've done it But yeah, we've I mean and Oh like youtube The internet like the internet in general we've just been like I want to do this How is that done and then finds somebody or some somewhere to learn it? It's Just look it up and I've always said to my history degree was really a degree in research So yeah, that's what that's what they really teach you So yeah Yeah, for sure Is how to pass that on to the kids and so Well, I have them looks of it. They want to know how to do something. I'm like here you go Look look it up. You have you have access to the internet and supervised But they can you know they can look things up and figure it out and Yeah, yeah problem solve we want them to but their our kids are gonna come Into their own with an institutional base of knowledge that Their peers aren't going to have and that we didn't have and trying to convince them that that's good. It's always fun sure They're like we're missing out. I'm like no, you're not our oldest is in college now. She's like colleges a scam like She's like this. This is ridiculous um tell us about the hat Uh, well she just started this semester and she she is um completely homeschooled from from the beginning yeah um and And mostly unschooled if you want to go by my definitions, but then she did um like most of her high school work Completely on her own Just like she picked her classes. She so research like she did it. I just went like yep. That looks good. Go Um, which is nice because our state allows that and Then she decided she wanted to she also started a bakery business so she started her own business Which part of why we started all of the farm business? Um the agraterism the The love all of that was um when she started high school We wanted to start a business as part of her curriculum So cool. We're like we're gonna do this and we're gonna we're gonna do it together Um, and she took that like two years in and started her own business So she does that now she's going to school for hospitality and restaurant management. So try to Do more with that, but she just keeps like she's like this is dumb. They don't really teaching us anything So i'm like okay, well, maybe i might be i went too far with this I'm like it's so good She's definitely approaching everything very skeptically. Yeah Because she actually did it like she knows how to be hospitable and she already yeah And she goes and takes a class and she's like it's an open book exam. This is dumb like i can't even learn the stuff because she has to she has to cite all of her sources from the book It's like it's like it's a very different. Yeah, yeah We're doing dual enrollment this year and with our oldest is it um in 12th grade And he's doing some college classes online and i've worked sort of similar like i'm like if you would take the whole base of Knowledge that kids are supposed to be exposed to you in k to 12 I'm like we didn't do a hundred percent of that pie You know we did a lot of our own things and then you're like do or die time like is he gonna survive and then he's just getting A's in these college classes. Yeah, they didn't matter like he did not matter. Yeah Well, and she's saying that she's sitting there listening to a lecture and taking notes and looks to her left and to her right and their kids Going Like asleep. We're watching Netflix on their laptop and then complaining. This is so hard. Yeah Yeah, she's like all the all the public school kids she's talked to she's just like like this is really Yeah, they're burned out and they're not absorbing any of this. Yeah, it's so interesting. What uh um What an inspiring story that you can learn a lot that really the other thing I've gotten from you is that you have some and you talked about this in the book you have some deep why Like you're a why w.h.y Like your why is I want to be the grandma that has no knowledge to pass on the why is I want to be able to have my Let my children have experience with starting businesses and and to get that exposure to adult life while there's still Kids and that's gonna really do a lot for them. You know when I have this agro tourism Like this family economy type situation. So you want to have two years worth of food. So I love that your wise The w.h.y. That they drive you And I think they help to foster a lot of success and accomplishment because you know the direction that you're headed The book is fantastic. Just came out this week. It's called the preserver's garden How to grow garden for fermenting Canning pickling dehydrating freeze drying and more freeze-dried watermelon That's so cool It looks like they don't know if they little pated this is actually from 2024. So this is actually kind of old but Yeah, only you could pass me one through the screen. I know right Look at that. Oh crumble it on your computer. Yeah, see it's just it crumbles to powder and it's it's watermelon powder Yeah, and it tastes like watermelon yep, it tastes like the most flavorful watermelon you've ever had because it's so concentrated That's so cool. I had to do a Do a demo. That's right feel. Yeah, probably because it's on time. Yeah, that is incredible Okay, well, I love it. I love what you're doing and I love that there's a bigger picture even beyond the information It's just like inspiring lifestyle change living seasonally all those different things so people can follow you at gooseberry Ridge gooseberry bridge Did I say it wrong at the beginning? Nope, that's right. Okay, well you yeah, I did say it wrong Yeah, it's very bridge bridge bridge bridge bridge bridge bridge bridge bridge bridge bridge bridge on our on our driveway That's what I would have assumed gooseberry bridge farm You people can come to the you pick far far flower farm in the summer and also check out the book the preserver's garden We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside You get to go first You know for me it I thought about this. Yeah It was most people haven't get it all listed so that's actually kind of interesting. It would tell them. Yeah It was picking I think about my grandpa's garden. So my grandpa was born in 1922 Depression World War II and he always had a big tomato garden and going out and picking a red tomato off the plant and eating it like an apple and having a run down your body You know a lot of times when we're out in our garden that memory will come to me and You know, it's it's just kind of a really cool thing to think that in 50 70 years our kids are gonna have that same Thought come through their head. Oh Do you know I love that someone said the other day it was Aaron Lynam She's written a couple really good books and she was talking about how God made nature as like a capsule for our memories And I thought that was so deep like that the we really remember sensory experiences So we remember the colors and the smells and the taste and You know when you're out so outdoors. It's such an ultimate sensory experience and like okay Well, that way I've got my iPhone and it's got 242,000 pictures on it You know, but like that's so new and that people did not have that before and so God made These nature experiences and it's a sort of help to take us back. Yeah, I mean taste mill Everything right there. Oh, it's so cool And I have none of that but But I you know remember also to other things like um doing Like my grandparents house always grandparents houses that were you have these memories But um we used to spend a lot of time in our grandma's house catching lizards and putting them in little jars and letting them go They go Yeah, that's the room for it. I so yeah I just bet grandparents often have a little bit more expansive time You know, so they can be a little more present So a lot of people do talk about things with their grandparents. Yeah, I think they have a lot more They have a lot more perspective to them. They do yeah, you know when when you're a parent in your worried about keeping people alive and educated and and you know Yeah, you lose track of the that bigger picture a lot of times and that's something grandparents have a little bit better Something I liked about having six kids too But the yeah, you're you're just more we have that grandparent perspective a little bit more Do you feel like a grandma don't you? I just read a book that was talking about how when you have more kids there's You see a little bit more clearly that there's so much variety between the children And so it's not really in your control. Yes, that's a good thing It's really yeah, that they're gonna kind of grow and along their own past and so we're just there to To guide and to provide opportunities like what you're doing It's an honor to meet both of you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. It's been fun. Yeah Thank you for being here today Make sure you're following the show so new episodes land in your feet automatically An apple podcast in Spotify you go to the show page and tap follow or the plus sign It takes a quick second and it helps a lot our February schedule is complete and it is robust We're talking about everything from archaeology to a man who plugged his nose for 10 days straight to see how bad is Health would decline from constant mouth breathing to an explorer who takes his young kids on expensive hikes Where there are no trails to water safety to Montessori living at home It's gonna be a great month following the show make sure you don't miss any episodes One last reminder before you go the 1000 hours outside app sale ends tomorrow January 31st is 2499 for the year and it's been such a practical help for so many families who want less screen time and more real life If you want it grab it now where the price is still live and if the app isn't your thing Our free trackers these are always available to at 1000 hours outside dot com slash checkers All right happy weekend friends. I hope you've had a good January until next time may you find extraordinary moments on ordinary paths In your skin worries out to the wind Climbs some trees skin your knees feel that grass on your feet again get out there and take it in Oh Careful Ain't nothing on screen Oh And I just want to share with I just want to share with you It's beautiful Such a beautiful world Aldi can't save you from an unexpected drenching Not again But they can save you from pouring your pennies down the drain a Tesco fruzen blubber is a three pound stand, but Aldi's are just 99 Aldi always finding ways to save Emers yourself in herbal essences new Moroccan organ oil elixir infused with pure organ oil just one drop Deliver us up to 100 hours of hair nourishment with the indulgence scent of a Moroccan garden Herbal essences new Moroccan organ oil elixir spark-quality hair repair without the price tag try it now Essences Seffa's repaired to smoothness nourishment with regimen use versus non-conditioning shampoo