Keepin it Real - The Gorham Homestead Podcast
This is where we talk about real life on the homestead, real food and real natural medicine. We talk about homesteading, building community, prepping and survival from a homemaker's perspective. We do our best to provide real and practical, old-fashioned solutions to modern everyday problems with a positive outlook on the future.
Keepin it Real - The Gorham Homestead Podcast
The Turnkey Life vs The Fixer Upper
Ever wondered why the fixer-upper life could be your ticket to a fulfilling and resilient partnership? Join us on this episode of the Gorham Homestead podcast. First I share our latest homesteading adventures, from grappling with a major PVC pipe leak to celebrating a bumper crop of tomatoes. While we battle pests threatening our cucumbers and squash, we're also planning a special live cooking session with Nicole, featuring unique preparations of cow tongue. Plus, our barnyard is buzzing with an unexpected 17 ducks, and I outline our plans for processing some of our Muscovy ducks while preserving a few as breeding pairs and lovable pets.
We also delve into the invaluable life lessons that come from embracing the fixer-upper journey, particularly for young couples just starting out. There's a stark contrast between the immediate, ready-made lives many young people envision and the reality of what their parents built over decades. I emphasize the growth, problem-solving skills, and sense of accomplishment that come from working toward goals together from scratch. Whether it's about fixing a leak or harvesting your crops, the journey is rich with rewards. With perseverance and determination, you'll find that everything falls into place, making the hard work worthwhile. Don't forget to connect with us on social media and check out our website for more insights and resources.
Keep it real and remember the journey is usually more important than the destination.
Sponsor for today:
Hamilton, Gorham & Duncan PLLC Your full service family law firm. Visit HGDLegal.com
TheGorhamHomestead.com
Hey y'all and welcome to keeping it real, the Gorham Homestead podcast, where we talk about real food, real natural living, the real art of natural healing and real life out here in our Tennessee homestead. I'm your host, dawn Gorham, and today is Thursday, july the 25th 2024, and you're listening to episode number 19. I'm getting close to 20. I should have 20, but I skipped last week, so I'm going to get there. It's okay. They tell me that most podcasts don't get past 10, so at least maybe I'm moving in the right direction. Our sponsor today is Hamilton Gorham and Duncan. They are your full-service attorneys. They are located in Bellevue, just outside of Nashville. They are just wonderful people. If I do say so myself, I happen to be married to one. T Gorham is one of the partners in Hamilton Gorham, duncan and of course you know him. He's always on the podcast with me. He's just a great human being and all of his clients love him. So if you need anything to do with family law, wills, small criminal offenses, not the big stuff, but you know you get hit with something little, he'll help you with that and they are willing to travel all over Middle Tennessee. So we would love to thank Hamilton Gorham and Duncan Jad, duncan T Gorham and Sue Hamilton for sponsoring the show today. Show today Update.
Speaker 1:So what's going on around here? Well, today I have a huge hole cut in the wall. You know, just when I think that nothing else can go wrong with this building, something else happens, and I may have mentioned it before. But we had some water coming out of the wall underneath the mini split here in the cannery and it ended up being a leaking pipe that was running down the wall. The PVC pipe had come detached and so they had to come and fix that and reattach it. But when the drywall guy came and cut out a test hole just a exploration hole, as he called it it was bad, like the spray foam insulation. You could stick your finger in it and it's just like sticking your finger in wet, icky, gross, like water was coming out of it. So a pretty big section is having to be removed, and so the mini split guys came back after everything's opened up and just double checked to make sure every other joint, everything else is buttoned up, sealed, glued, strapped, everything that they could do to make sure that we don't have any further leakage in that wall. So that's one thing that's been going on.
Speaker 1:The other thing with the garden. We are in tomato garden right now. I planted I may have mentioned it before I didn't want to be tomato poor this year. Well, I'm certainly not tomato poor, I am rolling in tomatoes. I planted about 60, 70 plants, not sure that only planted two varieties for preserving. I planted Bradley's for my canning tomatoes and then I planted Roma's for my sauce tomatoes and then just for snacking, I planted a beefsteak for slicing, which has not done anything for me this year. I think it's just been too dry, it didn't have irrigation on it. And then I plant Tommy Toes because I like to just walk by and eat those off of the plant. So that's doing good.
Speaker 1:The cucumbers not so much. Something was eating them while we were gone and even before that I think chickens were getting in there and eating them. Deer. We have a groundhog that I would really love to take out and he gets in there and just hides and goes to town on whatever he can find. So I suspect it's one of those. So we're not getting a whole lot of cucumbers. I will have that fixed by next year because I have a brainstorm plan for that.
Speaker 1:Not getting any squash, whatever it was, was also ate all like nipped every leaf and growth that it could nip off of my squash plant. So I know everybody else gets zucchini and squash out the ears from just a few plants and this year I didn't get any. I'm real sad because I'm out of squash relish and instead of any other kind of relish, even in like tuna fish on hot dogs. We love hot squash relish. I have a really good recipe for that. So anyway, I might have to hit up somebody see if I can trade some tomatoes for squash, which actually that's a pretty good trade, if you ask me.
Speaker 1:Tomorrow, nicole and I will be cooking cow tongue. We're going live, we're going to do a surprise live and she's going to cook it her way and I'm going to cook it my way. She's at her house, I'm at my house and we're going to just cook one of those pieces of meat that when you get a cow processed it just gets lost in the back of the freezer forever until you decide to feed it to the dogs, and we're going to show you that you can actually cook the tongue and make it tasty. So looking forward to that. The barnyard's moved. We got everything moved from the lower barnyard up to in front of the house, turkeys, guineas ducks I have 17 ducks.
Speaker 1:You talk about chicken math, duck math is just as bad. I did not like. My husband came in the other day and he said you realize we have 17 ducks? And I was like, no, I did not realize we have 17 ducks. But we do. We have two turkeys that we're going to keep for pets, um, just to sort of be as mascots. Let them run around, let them look cute when people come to visit, Just to sort of be as mascots, let them run around, let them look cute when people come to visit.
Speaker 1:And all of those Muscovies we may process. I don't know if any is a female, then I will keep a breeding pair Because my understanding is that they're really good mothers and they're very prolific when they start to breeding. So we'll see how that goes. But they're really big, so I bet they would make really good meat and I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to trying some Pekin duck. I've heard a lot of people say that they like that a lot better because it's a lot milder meat. Me personally, I have not eaten that. I have One of the speaking of foods I don't normally eat. I've also learned that I like lamb. I had some lamb that Nicole gave me, that I cooked. But then I also had lamb chops at the wedding that we were at a couple of weeks ago in Colorado and they were like, really like not grocery store tasting lamb chops. Those were fantastic. So we decided we're going to get some sheep, so that may be on the horizon for next year.
Speaker 1:That's pretty much all the updates for me as of right now. There's not really. It's just so hot. I'm not really doing a whole lot. The bees I've lost one beehive, the other one doesn't have a whole lot of activity. I'm feeling like a failure as a whole lot. The bees I've lost one beehive, the other one doesn't have a whole lot of activity. I'm feeling like a failure as a beekeeper. Of course, it's my first year and that tends to be how I learn is I fail and I fail and I fail and I fail, until I figure out why I failed and failed, and failed and failed and then I will just be awesome at it. From that point forward, I never know everything about all things or about anything, but failure tends to be my best teacher and it makes me understand why we do things the way that we do things. Hopefully I won't lose that other hive in the process, though I have a friend coming over Monday. It's going to open up the hive with me and just double check Because I know there's things I'm supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1:In late July, going into August, I didn't get any honey. I wasn't anticipating getting any honey this year. I'm hoping I'll get honey next year. We shall see. I'm hoping I'll get honey next year. We shall see. And if I can just get enough, you know, for our family and our friends and our local community people who are constantly asking me when I'm going to have honey, that would be really, really good. So I'm really excited about it. Plus, I use it for a lot of my medicinal stuff. Like, I went through five gallons of honey last year. No, I went through two buckets, 10 gallons of honey last year, making elderberry syrup and making fire cider and then making cough syrups and you know all of the kind of stuff. I put it in ice cream, as you know, as an alternative to just straight up sugar. So there's lots that I do with honey. It's really good as an antiseptic on the skin. You know stuff like that. So hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll see. Hopefully I won't be an utter bee failure, we'll see.
Speaker 1:That is literally it as far as what's going on the farm Saturday this coming up. Saturday I have a workshop. It is our last Beginner's Canning Workshop of the season. So if you're hearing this and it's not later than Saturday, july the 27th, you can still come. We are doing tomatoes Wonder why? And I'm going to teach everybody how to blanch them, how to do whole tomatoes, how to do sauce tomatoes, how to make salsa. If they want to, we'll talk about salsas. We may not make salsa. I'm not sure we may. That might be kind of fun, but I'm really looking forward to it. Every time we have a canning workshop it is so much fun and it always turns out to be so much better than I thought it was going to be, and it's always better than the last one. So you know, if there's anything that you want to learn, check out our website. The different workshops and classes that I teach, we have usually five to six throughout the season. It's hard to do more than that. Just because it's a farm Like, there's things that need to be done. So I have a hard time, you know, and I want to schedule it on Saturdays because most people work Monday through Friday. So, but at any rate, just check out our website and you can see the schedule. Remaining schedule for the year. Sunday is our Dixon County Homesteaders Alliance group. I'm really excited about that.
Speaker 1:We're doing a repeat of home distilling for personal use, you know, not for, not for resale, not where we're going to have the sheriff knocking on our door, but just, you know, to teach people that. You know you can distill if ever need be. You can distill water. You know you can distill all kinds of stuff, but yeah, I use it for tinctures. It's not. I'm not a drinker, I don't drinks give me headaches. I can't even. You know, I can't even enjoy a glass of wine anymore without an awful headache. So you know that's not a reason for me to want to distill anything, but I'm fascinated by it. I think it is such a cool skill to have and, again, it's a solvent. So we use it. For, you know, when we have medicinal stuff and we want to make it super strong, we put our herb in the watered down. You know, moonshineine, we half it by proof. You know, bring the proof down about to half, so that you know, so we can get it to about 90 proof and that way we can get the most out of that herb, the most medicinal properties of that herb that we possibly can.
Speaker 1:Now that we got all the updates out of the way, I'm just gonna hop right into our topic. So today's topic is the turnkey life versus the fixer-upper life, and this has been on my mind a lot lately, just because we have so many young'uns in our family getting married my nieces and nephews and my son's getting married in September and my daughter's had her first baby. And you know, we have two grandkids from our older one, but they've only been married a couple of years and they're in that phase where everything is a struggle. And I think that, well, first of all, let's just talk about the difference in what turnkey technically means and what fixer upper technically means. You know, if you think about a turnkey life, you think about walking right into the perfect house that has just been built, with brand new appliances and never walked on, floors and fresh paint, and you know everything is perfect and the backyard has the privacy fence and the pool. That's turnkey. That's walking right in and everything is set up for you the fixer-upper is not so much. The fixer-upper requires imagination. You have to be able to problem solve and you have to be able to think outside the box sometimes, and that's what you know the fixer upper house is. It's definitely what our fixer upper house is and work in progress. But you think of that in terms of life when you're young and you're fresh out of the gate and you're just getting married, starting a family.
Speaker 1:I feel like a lot of young people now and maybe it was this way decades ago. I don't know. I'm only giving you my observation and I'm definitely not saying that this is right or wrong. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong. I'm not saying anybody else is right or wrong. So I just wanted to give you a perspective and a little something to think about. So the young people, I feel like when they first get married, they want all the things Like they want everything that their parents have, but took them 30 years to get. And you know, because kids were younger when their parents were struggling, I think they don't realize or have that memory of the tough years of and you know some parents hide that from their children. They don't let them know that things are tough. They don't involve them in the you know, the family, financials or anything else, and so they don't necessarily see all that.
Speaker 1:But most people's lives who have a successful life together is not necessarily the turnkey, it's not necessarily the walk into it and everything is perfect. And I'm not saying that the turnkey life can't be great, I'm just saying it's not necessary. And there's a lot of value that comes from walking into the fixer upper life. Walking into the fixer upper life not having everything at first, struggling wondering how you're going to do this or that and denying yourself your impulses, figuring out how to problem solve together it's one of those things that just the fixer-upper life takes time and it takes effort and maybe even some sweat equity, you know, to make it get to where you want it to be. But you know the upside of having the fixer-upper life you're not walking into a ready-made life for you means that you can mold your life into whatever you want that to be. And in my opinion, because I have done that and I'm on the more of the coasting side, I'm still building. But now I know my vision. I have my vision and there's something rewarding in that If you take the time to really think through who you are, who you want to be, and not what your preconceived life has said that you have to be. There's a lot of freedom in that, whereas you know you walk into the turnkey life, so to speak, a lot of times.
Speaker 1:You're from very wealthy parents and a lot of times everything is set up for you College was set up for you. A lot of times parents you know wealthy parents will pay the down payment or pay buy the house for the young couple, but they didn't work for anything. They didn't have any personal emotional investment in anything as a couple. They didn't work towards anything together. And I'm not saying that's bad. I wish I could buy every one of my kids' houses. I wish I could buy them a three-story 10,000-square-foot house, every last one of them, and put them right here on the farm with me. But I can't do that. And it's just. You know it's not practical to even think like that for me, and it's just you know it's not practical to even think like that for me.
Speaker 1:But when you do that together, the number one thing that comes from that together starting out, not having everything digging and scratching and clawing your way through life in the beginning is growth. You grow together and the fixer-upper life encourages continuous growth, continuous evolving and continuous learning. And you're doing that together, as a family, as a couple. You know, when you work towards your goals and you're supporting each other, you develop a resilience Like you get stronger and you gain problem-solving skills like real-life problem-solving skills. You get a deeper appreciation for you know who you are and for the end result. And it's not just about the destination. It's not about ending up in that perfect 6,000 to 10,000 square foot house with the perfect car and the 2.2 kids and the two doodles. And it's not about that part of it. It's about the journey. It's about the journey getting there and there's a lot of memories to be made for young couples getting there, walking that journey together.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of personal fulfillment in it. You know, when you achieve something through your own hard work and it's not handed to you, you know and you got your own grit and your own determination it gives you more of a sense of accomplishment. You know it's the difference between inheriting a big old fortune from mommy and daddy which is fine, again, fine, wish I had it to give or building your own business from the ground up, like if you built that business with your hands and then you become a multimillionaire, that means a lot more to you than someone handing you an inheritance that you did nothing to earn. That you did nothing to earn. There's a lot of customization and control. When you we call it with Self Reliance Festival, nicole and all of us all of us have different terms for it, but the basic of it is when you become self-reliant, it's lifestyle design and it's what you want it to be.
Speaker 1:When you start out from scratch, you get to design your life. You get to design who's in it. You get to design every part of it. How much time you spend doing this, how much time you spend doing that, where you want to live, how you want to live, do you want to grow your own food? Do you want to live in the city? It is all about design. You design it how you want it to be. You can make decisions that directly affect your outcomes and it gives you a sense of ownership over your life. Nobody made you do it. Nobody pushed you to do it. It was not something that you walked into. This is yours. It's yours and yours alone.
Speaker 1:There's a lot to say for value and effort. When everything's handed to you, it can be easy to take things for granted, and working towards your goals helps you to understand the value of effort and the importance of perseverance. You persevere, you overcome, you make it happen and there's a lot to be said for that and it also teaches you to appreciate and take care of the things that you have, because you worked hard to get it and you don't want to tear it up, you don't want to not maintain it, you don't want to not take care of it, because you have personal investment in it. It builds character. When you are doing things hard, you know you do the hard thing. It makes you a better person, no-transcript. You learn how to handle setbacks, manage stress, you bounce back from failures, and these experiences are invaluable and they shape who you are, they shape everything about you, and you do it together.
Speaker 1:Again, that's the fixer-upper life for the couples. Everything binds you together Because each person evolves right Like I'm evolving. I'll be different in a year, probably, than I am now. I'm different way, different now than I was three years ago. But that energy of problem solving together, of problem solving together, of struggling together, of figuring out how you're going to do it together creates an interwoven I don't know how to explain it it's like an interwoven energy between the two of you. A bond that's the word I was looking for A bond between you in those shared experiences and those shared moments that make you stronger as a couple and inevitably, more than likely, will keep you together.
Speaker 1:I believe that people who learn to problem solve together are the ones that stay together, you know, the ones that stay married and don't end up divorced. And I'm not throwing stones, I've been there, done that, but I learned from it and I learned what I did wrong and I am, you know, with T. I have fixed a lot not fixed everything, nobody can but I fixed a lot of that, and so I just think that having those moments together is really devalued in today's society. I think society looks at you as you got to have this and you got to have that, and if you don't, it's a status thing. To me, status thing is having the life that you want, whatever that is, and understanding that nothing worth having comes easy. You might not have the money to make the down payment on that house. You're getting married. Everybody else has a house. You want a house. You want the white picket fence, and that's okay. It's okay to dream about those things, but it's not okay to let that consume.
Speaker 1:You Learn to enjoy the moment and find value in those moments, because one day I know all us old folks say it, but I promise you it's true One day you will look back on those moments as the best of your life and you will understand how all of those difficult moments bring you to where you are, when you're looking at your grandchildren or you're looking at your great-grandchildren and you're sitting with that person by your side and then you're thinking back on the life you built. I'm going to wrap this up and keep this not a super long one today, but just remember young folks, because I know I have young folks listening to me and I love you. I'm so glad you're on this health food, natural food journey and I'm so glad you're thinking about how to design your life and how to keep the industrial food system out of your refrigerator and out of your stomach. I'm just so thankful for that. And so I'm really speaking to you, to the young folks who are just maybe.
Speaker 1:You know, less than 10 years of marriage is still tough. It's the hard part, it's the really hard part. But just remember, y'all, the journey is just as important as the destination, if not more so, and you are literally carving out your path in life. Keep pushing, keep trying, keep leaning on each other, keep problem solving. I have told my kids since they were old enough to talk to me, and they always joked and said I was going to put it over the door, you know, going out because my kids would complain about a problem that they had. But life is a series of problems that you have to solve. Once you solve one, there will be another, and when you learn to communicate and learn to do that together, beautiful things happen. So with that, thank you for tuning in.
Speaker 1:I hope that you've enjoyed today's podcast. I hope it gives you something to think about so that you don't feel less than because you're not less than. You don't have less or need more. You're going to get there and it's going to be okay. I know it takes more to do right now because of the way that things are, but things always work out in the end and it's going to be fine. When the time is right, the stars will align and you will slowly but surely continue to build and to build and to build, until one day you wake up and you'll be like, wow, this is cool. I hope that you'll leave me a review. Hit that subscribe button.
Speaker 1:It helps other people to find our podcast and you can find me at just the Gorham Homestead. Reach out to me on social media. I'm there and I try to answer. It's not anybody else doing that for me. I'm also on other socials as the Gorham Homestead and my website is thegorhamhomesteadcom. That's where I have my workshops and things produce that I have for sale. So check out what we got going over there and just remember y'all. Whatever you're doing today, just keep it real. See y'all, we'll be right back. I may not come from much, but I've got just enough. As long as my baby's in my arms and the good Lord knows what's in my heart, I refuse to be ashamed. It's just a southern thing.