Ep 23. I Didn't Quit- I just needed to live it

I disappeared for two years, and I didn’t mean to. Life just hit hard, fast, and nonstop and I needed to live it before I could tell it with any honesty. When I logged into my podcast host and saw people were still downloading the show every week, it stopped me cold. That’s when I knew this story matters, and that I needed to come back and say thank you. 

 The last two years have been a crash course in homestead life and small business reality. I’ve been building our Tennessee dairy from the ground up, learning through mistakes, small wins, and a few proud moments that only come after a lot of grit. At the same time, my mom was diagnosed with MS and went through a major crisis that left her unable to walk or care for herself. She lived with me for almost a year while we worked toward rehab and getting her back to living independently, and I was trying to care for her while keeping the farm and the dairy moving forward. 

I also share why this podcast isn’t about “building a podcast business” for me. It’s an audio record of real food, raw milk work, natural living, and the choices we make out here, in my own voice, so my kids and grandkids can someday understand what these seasons felt like. Coming up, I’ll unpack the unannounced Department of Agriculture visit, the safety protocols we use to produce safe raw milk, how we streamline and automate farm tasks, and what it looks like to bring on a trusted helper who now lives on the farm. If you’re walking through your own hard season, hit subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find Keeping It Real.

Transcript

Welcome Back After Two Years

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Hey y'all, and welcome to Keeping It Real, the Gorham Homestead podcast, where we talk about real food, real natural living, and real life out here in our Tennessee homestead. I'm your host, Dawn Gorham, and today is Sunday, April the 18th, 2026, and you are listening to episode number 23. And the title of this episode is I didn't quit. I just had to live it first. It's been two years, so yeah, it's been a long time. And I didn't plan to be gone for two years, but life kind of happened in a really big way. And I needed to live it more before before I could talk about it, but now I'm back. I just happened to log in to the podcast hosting service this morning, and I realized that like I'm still getting 70 downloads a week. And that stopped me in my tracks because I haven't done anything in almost two years, and that kind of stopped me in my tracks and made me realize that this does matter. Like it matters more than I thought. And I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you to those who have stuck around, who have continued to listen to things that I have recorded in the past and talked about. I just want you to know that you are appreciated. So where I've been, just gonna give you the highlights because I'm gonna unpack that stuff and talk about it in depth in subsequent episodes.

Building A Dairy From Scratch

SPEAKER_01 1:46

But for the most part, I have built my dairy now from the ground up. And that has been an experience. It was there has been some challenges, there's been a lot of rewards, but I've been working really hard and pouring myself into building my business. And also during that time, my mother was diagnosed with MS. And that that was a very hard thing for me to deal with because it was, she's later in life, she had a major crisis episode that really put her down to the point where she could

Caring For Mom Through MS

SPEAKER_01 2:24

not walk, she could not take herself to the bathroom, she couldn't do anything. And so she came to live with me for almost a full year before we got her rehabilitated to the point where she could go back home and live independently. And then I was trying to build a business and care for her, her care for her at the same time. Um, and I'll talk about more about that later, but that has been sort of that was my focus for quite a long time. And and and you know, in conjunction with building the dairy, and it was just it was a lot. So, you know, I thought I would miss one episode, then it turned into two episodes, and then before I knew it, it just wasn't part of my routine anymore. And I was living all of the things instead of getting on here and talking about it, and I learned more than I expected to learn. I have some big wins and some proud moments that I'm gonna talk about, and I have some hard moments, a lot of exhaustion and overwhelm. I had to make a lot of heavy decisions, and I saw I was blessed to have some real community coming together to help me out. I learned what my strengths and my weaknesses are, and I learned to think long term about what direction I want my business to go, I want my brand to go, and what I want people to remember me as. I mean, that when you get older, at least for me, the more I think about legacy and what I want to leave behind. And the reason I didn't get on here and talk about it, I mean, one part of that was just it time goes by really quickly, and before you know it, you're just it's been two years. But I was in the middle of it, and I had no clarity really while I

Why The Podcast Returns Now

SPEAKER_01 4:14

was in it because I was just trying to get through each day, trying to survive, trying to figure out moment to moment how I was handling things, and I needed, you know, some distance from those moments to be able to look back on them and talk about them. And so that's what we're gonna talk about over the next, I don't know, five, 10, 15 episodes is I'm really gonna unpack what has happened to me over the last two years. And the reason I'm back is not because I'm trying to build a podcast business. It's because I wanted to document my story. I know this is probably not ever going to make me any money. I mean, it is great for my dairy, it's great advertisement, it's great to get the word out there so that people know what we're doing here and things like that. But I just want my listeners to understand this is truly just for me a documentation of my life and things that are going on in my own voice so that someday my children and my grandchildren can go back and listen to these things and understand where I was in the moment, understand decisions that I made, understand how I lived and what my life looked like. And that's that's really my point to doing all this. So I hope that you'll go along with me on this journey. What's coming next?

What Future Episodes Will Unpack

SPEAKER_01 5:34

I'm going to try to get back into doing weekly episodes. I'm gonna I'm gonna try to schedule them on Sunday and release them on Monday so that I can talk about the week, the previous week, and the upcoming week. I feel like that'll fit best into my routine. Good Lord willing, nothing else crazy happens, and I can do this. Um, I'm gonna unpack everything one piece at a time. The dairy, how I built it, decisions that I've made, mistakes that I've made, the little wins and the big wins. And then I'm gonna talk about what happened with my mom and what I personally believe led to the crisis that she was in and how we've dealt with it, how we overcame that, as you know, trying to build a business in the same time and trying to trying to get her back on her feet and get her back to living independently. So, with that being said, I just want to welcome you, welcome you back. Hope that you'll stick with me. I'm going to get a real episode ready to to release and give a full full story. But there's been a lot going on here. Been a lot. I'm going to talk to you about what happened the day that the Department of Agriculture showed up unannounced. Gonna talk to you about safety protocols and things that I've implemented here on the farm to make sure that we are producing safe, raw milk for the families that pick up from us. Gonna talk about what our plans are and you know what what we've done to try to streamline things and make things easier and automate things. And I have a helper that is now staying here on the farm. He's been helping me for like a year, but over the last couple weeks, we just kind of decided we were gonna let him live in the camper, and he is going, he has been staying here, and it's been really great just to have someone else sharing that load with me. So we're gonna talk about all that, what that looks like, having someone, you know, that's not family, although he's kind of becoming like family, to stay on your property and help out. And that's that the older I get, the more I realize that's that's kind of that's kind of the way to go. Um, if you can afford it and you can do it. And so we'll just take it one week at a time. And I just want to tell you thank you. Thank you for listening, thank you for understanding, thank you for continuing to listen to the episodes that we had previously done.

Lifestyle Design And Leaving HOA Life

SPEAKER_01 8:09

Once a month, I'm gonna do a Sunday sit-down with T and we'll together talk about you know what this life looks like that we're building, because that's that's why we're doing all this. This is lifestyle design. We wanted to build our life the way that we wanted it, where we can feel free and not have anyone, you know, making us feel like our decisions were less than stellar or, you know, something they didn't like. That's why we didn't like living in an hoa. You know, we had neighbors right on top of us, and I hear stories now from the old neighborhood where people are putting cameras on each other and they're contacting the HOA and they're calling the police and they're everybody's fighting and everybody's fussing. And I'm just so glad that I'm removed from that now. I love living in a secluded area out in the country, only have 23 acres, hoping to expand eventually. I'm really working my neighbor to try to let me lease the pasture behind me so that I can expand my dairy. So that's some of the long-term goals that I have. And I just again, I want to thank you. And so, whatever you're doing today, uh whatever you've got on the docket, remember to keep it real. And to my babies and grandbabies, I love you big. Y'all go out and have a great week.

Closing Thanks And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 9:47

My daddy was a guitar pick, laying all the local clothes, and my mama was a waitress with a parking mate with a truck. We didn't have much money. Living in a trailer, on the edge of the trainer, ma'am.