Episode 24- From Stuck To Fired Up

You can work hard, wake up early, and still feel like your homestead business has hit a ceiling. After Nicole Sauce’s spring workshop, we came home with that rare kind of clarity that only happens when you spend real time with doers: people building businesses, tightening systems, and taking action even when life is messy. We talk honestly about what flipped for us, from how we start our mornings to how we’re thinking about the next season on our Tennessee homestead.

We dig into the practical side of productivity for farm life and entrepreneurship: why “getting up early” is not the same as protecting your best hours, how journaling and reflection can beat instant task mode, and why positive self talk and words of affirmation change what you actually do. We also share the tension of perfectionism, especially in a raw milk dairy where safety and sanitation are non-negotiable, and how we’re learning to keep “best” from becoming “stuck.”

Then we zoom out to business growth and regenerative agriculture. With the dairy maxed out on pasture, we’re building smarter income streams through pastured poultry, beehives and honey, organic glyphosate-free baked goods, eggs, and other local farm products. The heart of it, though, is teaching: our homestead renaissance camp for teenage girls, real food skills like sourdough and herbal remedies, and the mindset shift that happens when young people finally understand local food versus convenience food.

If you’re building something and feel stuck, this one will light a fire. Subscribe for more real-food homesteading and natural living, share this with a friend who needs momentum, and leave a review with the one habit you’re changing this week.

Transcript

Welcome And Sudden Pivot

SPEAKER_01 0:17

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, Don Gorham, and today is Sunday, April the 26th, and you are listening to episode 24. Um, today I had a completely different thing that I was going to talk about today. I already had my notes for that, but I am totally switching gears because I just got back from Nicole Sauce's workshop, her spring workshop, and I am jazzed. Like I am really, really excited about all of the things that I learned and picked up. And I came back really energized about continuing to build my business. And so I'm come just come completely switch gears and not talk about what's happened. I want to talk about where I'm going.

Workshop Energy And Better Mornings

SPEAKER_01 1:14

And one of the things that I really enjoyed about the weekend was I was surrounded by doers, people who are very just focused, hyper-focused on where they're going, what they're doing, and taking actionable steps to get there. And it really inspired me. Like I spent a lot of time listening to several friends talk about the businesses that they're building. I listened to Jack Spearco talk about, you know, ways to better organize yourself and to wait and ways to be a better person, uh, to start your days off better, just to be more organized and more fluent in all the things that you're doing so that your days are better streamlined and you're more able to be productive and get things done. And one of the things, one of my takeaways from that was he was talking about getting up at 5 a.m., you know, spending your first two hours or at least, you know, an hour in doing something for yourself. And I get up at four. So getting up early is not a problem for me. But what I found was I was getting up at four and making my coffee and then sitting down in my favorite, you know, spot on the couch and opening up my phone and going to Facebook and getting sucked into an hour of scrolling, seeing if there was anything I needed to know, anything that was interesting. Well, before I knew it, you know, an hour, hour and a half of time that I could have been productive had been, you know, sucked right out of my day. And so, I mean, over the last few years, before I even heard this talk, I had kind of stopped doing that and started getting up and going straight to the computer with my coffee, uh, updating QuickBooks, answering emails, you know, doing correspondence and admin kind of things. And I thought I was doing really great with that. And after hearing him talk, I kind of realized that I'm not I'm not giving any time to myself for reflection, for prayer, for just reflecting on what my day was going to look like and where I was going and what I was going to do. I just instantly went into task mode. And so I that really, really hit me hard. And all the way home, I called my husband and I was like, here's what Jack said, and here's, you know, the things that I'm I'm going to do to be different. And and I think you should do it in your business too. And of course, he kind of, you know, it's one of those things where you can't get someone else to to do the thing until they're ready to do the thing. And we'll see if he, if he does, if you know, letting me lead by example makes any difference with him. He is super productive and he, you know, his brain works differently from mine. And so I'm really like, I felt like my business, building the dairy, building my brand, all that had kind of hit a plateau. Like I felt like I'd hit the ceiling and there's nowhere else for me

Dairy Plateau And New Income Streams

SPEAKER_01 4:38

to go. And so I didn't really know what I was going to do from here. And I still don't a hundred percent know, but I know what my passions are. I'm very, very passionate about producing the very best, safest raw milk in the state of Tennessee. I'm not content with being good. I want to be the best. And I want to be the safest. So that's that's one of the things that I believe sets our dairy apart and why, you know, we do have a waiting list. We do have uh people that have been with me since day one that trust me, they trust me with their family's health. And that means everything to me. Like it, it is, it is a huge responsibility that I do not take lightly. But I can't get any more cows for right now. Completely maxed out on pasture. I cannot grow that part of my business at all. But what I what one of the things that we have done is my my friend Kale has come to live on the property. He is partnered with me. I would not call him a worker as much as a mutual partner in sharing the load of all of the things that have to do with this farm. And part of it is, you know, for for rent purposes, but part of it is I want him to be successful as well. I want him to be able to do what he loves. And he loves the animals and the poultry and regenerative agriculture and permaculture. And he's young, he's only like 28 years old. And so it excites me to see him be so excited. So I'm hoping that that I can also bring Kale along in this journey and that maybe by the time he's my age, he will have all of the tools that will make him super successful in business and super successful in regenerative agriculture and doing all the things that he wants to do. So right now he's sharing the load in pastured poultry. He built chicken tractors. You know, I paid for the materials and whatever, and he's got those birds out on pasture. So that's one of the things that we're we're doing to try to generate a little more income. We also have, I've got five beehives. I've gone from three to five. So hopefully, you know, we'll be able to produce some Gorham Homestead honey this year. So, but products, there's only so many products that you can generate from your homestead. And Kaylee baking bread and he's doing an amazing job. He's about to transition to all organic. We didn't really realize, you know, what a large market we had in our in our herd shit within our herd share community that truly want glyphosate-free bread products. And so a whole that has opened up a whole new market for him. So we we are going to be offering all kinds of baked goods that are completely organic, the best quality products that are the ingredients that we could possibly put in it. And and people seem to be really responding well to that. And so that's one thing we've decided to put in our store. And I've added, you know, some things that neighbors are producing, like I've got some neighbors' honey, I've got some real maple syrup that a that a friend of ours tapped the trees, and we've, you know, we've got her maple syrup, and we we put out eggs, we've got duck eggs, we've got chicken eggs, we've got guinea eggs, um, we do some hatching eggs, and

Teaching Camps And A Bigger Mission

SPEAKER_01 8:22

you those are the kind of the things that we have to offer. But what I what I love is teaching. But I love teenage girls. Like that is my that's what makes me happy is hanging out with teenage girls. I don't know why. I really don't, but I do love them. And so I'm we're really building a lot of infrastructure this year to try to get back to doing our homestead renaissance camp next year. And Kale may very well do a boys' camp and teaching, you know, boy things, uh things that young men need to know. And I'm going to be doing the girls' camp. And it's going to be a two-week camp again where girls come, they learn to make sourdough bread, they learn to make herbal products, they learn to make homemade condiments like mayonnaise and mustard and ketchup without all the crap ingredients that they have at the store. And we I did that last year during the summer, and I loved it. And the girls loved it, and they were so fun. And they, you know, I took them to the creek at the end of the day, and they would play in the creek. And after we made all of our products, and at the end of the week, they took their products home, all the things that they did during the week to show their parents what they had created. And it, I felt like it was really empowering to those young girls. And and that's kind of what I feel like, you know, if we don't cultivate these skills in the next generation, they're gonna be gone. And a lot of people don't care. We have literally become a slave to convenience to the point where we don't care how to do these things. And that's all well and good. I understand that the world's probably not gonna come to an end and you'll probably always be able to go to the store and get your things, but those things are making people sick. And they don't even understand the difference in the food that they can get from their local farmer and the food that they get from the grocery store. And I feel like these girls, once they left this camp, had a very deep understanding of that. They were much more knowledgeable when they left about the things that they eat than they were when they came in. And to me, that was the most successful part of the whole camp. Whether or not they could make sourdough bread or they could milk a cow or we did that, whatever it is that they learned to do, it was their mindset had changed. And some of those girls, I did a kids' farmer's market in this in September of last year, and I'll do that again this year. I loved the kids' farmer's market. But those girls came back and they had made things to sell. Some of the things that they learned how to do here, some of them had other art things and homemade things, and there was rabbit jerky, there was canned jams and jellies and art and all kinds of just beautiful things that these kids came, they learned how to bring their product to market, they had to talk to the customers as they came, they had to tell their price and make their change and figure out what their cost was and figure out what their actual net profit was. And I felt like it was a really great experience for those kids. But it made me so happy that every single one of those girls who came to my homestead renaissance camp came back to the kids' farmers market with a product. And to me, that that that really felt good. It felt good in my soul. And it made me realize that that is that is my mission to help and learn or help to teach the girls, the young women, that there is there is a di you there is a different path. They don't necessarily have to choose it, and they don't necessarily have to choose it all the time. You don't have to do all the things all the time. But to have that baseline, that knowledge base, that there is a healthier way, there is a way that you can grow your garden and still have a life. You know, you don't have to do this huge garden. You can do raised beds, you can do a tomato in a pot. You can, and I taught them how to start seeds. I taught them how to we we milked cows, we made homemade cheese, we made elderberry syrup. I mean, there was just so many things that we did over those two weeks, and pretty much taught them everything, at least touched on everything that I know how to do. And I'm still learning. There's lots of things that I still don't know how to do that I would love to learn. I'm still trying to add, you know, at least one or two new skills a year, and that's what I wanted to instill in these girls, the love of learning, the love of knowledge. And so that's where I feel like my business is going. I may be wrong, I don't know, but I'm really jazzed up about it. I am uh hopeful that, you know, next year when we do the girls' camp, they will have a really great response. Because it's something that these girls, you know, they said they would talk about for the rest of their lives. And they're still friends. That's even better. Like I saw one of them at church and she was like, Yeah, you know, we all still talk to each other. All the girls that were at camp, we still, you know, we keep in touch. And I was like, Oh, that's wonderful, that's great. Just to have other people who kind of understand the same things that you understand. And I mean, looking forward, like I'm really I'm really looking forward to being more streamlined, more energized, more uh focused on where we're going. And luckily, Kale is very much on board with you know having very good business practices, being the absolute best and not settling for anything less when we offer products to customers. And so that is that is great that we share that same vision. And it's nice for T because he has someone, you know, to help, because he works and doesn't get home till six or seven o'clock. So having Kale share that load with me has been a great uh relief for T as well.

Projects Regenerative Goals And Focus

SPEAKER_01 15:14

And I'm really gonna work on spending those first two hours of the morning before I start milking, before I start doing admin stuff. I'm really going to focus on journaling, writing down, you know, what has what has happened the day before, what I did good. I'm really gonna write down my words of affirmation, you know, things that are a pretty positive person anyway. Like I'm always looking for the good in things. But I really want to extra focus on that instead of just focusing on one or two things that I feel like are going good. I really want to try to focus on all the things that are going good and write those down and make my list and get my list done. Because the problem is I want to do all the things all the time. Very, and I'm very much a perfectionist. And sometimes, I mean, in a dairy, you got to be a perfectionist. You absolutely have to be because you people's safety and their health are in your hands. So that is a place where me being a perfectionist is actually one of my strong suits. But when you get outside of the dairy and all of the other responsibilities that I have, perfect can be the what they say, the perfect can be the enemy of the good. And and I spend so much time on wanting things to be perfect and wanting things to look nice and be aesthetically pleasing that that I sometimes get myself overwhelmed and then the thing doesn't get done at all. Right now, a few projects that we have going on. We still have the greenhouse high tunnel that we have to get repaired. I really want to get that done. It was a windstorm and just completely killed it like two years ago, and we still haven't repaired it. I got a deer busters eight-foot fence to go around my big garden. We went ahead and elected to do a drive-through gate with that, and also a walkthrough gate, and then also a gate that opens up to the chickens, so that at the end of the season we can just let the chickens in and let them, you know, take care of whatever's left in the garden. And we have to get that healed. There's a lot of rocks in it. There's just so many things, you know, parts of that project that need to be done. We are trying to fence off parts of the pasture and get that to where we can rotationally graze them. And that is, you know, it's everything's money. Just money, money, money. And so we're just taking that one piece at a time. Kel has roped off one part of it where we have the chickens going behind the cows at this point. And, you know, when time and money allow, we'll rope off another part of it. And we're just gonna take it piece by piece and try to get it to where we are being more regenerative, more rotational grazing. Because my goal has always been that I want to leave this place better than I found it.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

And that's not saying much, but I still want to leave it better than I found it.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Going forward, you'll probably be seeing me a lot more on social media trying to promote things, trying to really get the word out there so that people understand what we're doing here. I have some moms that have asked for a mom's camp or mommy and me camps. Uh, we may very well branch out into that, just depending on what the interest is. But I'm I'm really excited, really looking forward to my personal growth and my business growth. And that's what we're gonna be focusing on over the next, you know, few weeks to a few months. This year, I'm just gonna try to pick out, you know, two big projects to get done and some little projects to finish and clean up and you know, make sure that we have all of the areas picked up and cleaned up before we move on to the next thing because sometimes that can be super hard. And I do have people working for me now in the evenings that help me milk because part of the problem with that was I was milking twice a day and you know, producing all of this wonderful food, you know, all this grass-fed meat and pastured poultry, and we produce turkeys and ducks and processed geese, and we have all this great food, and I didn't have time to cook it because milking at four o'clock in the afternoon is right when I should have been cooking in the kitchen. So now that I have help, I can get back to, you know, I've been able to get back to cooking the healthy meals and and doing the things and you know, getting getting everything ready and cleaned up and you know, into bed early and all that kind of stuff.

Community Accountability And Closing

SPEAKER_01 20:10

So with that, we're gonna wrap this one up. I just kind of wanted to give you an update. If you ever get the chance to go to Nicole's spring workshop, it is a great place to meet people. It's a wonderful fellowship, it's very uplifting. People are very supportive of each other. And every time I go, I meet someone new. We had some new people that had not been there before, but we also get to reunite with you know, the folks that have been along the way the whole time, and it's like a reunion. And everybody holds everybody else accountable. It's like, okay, what are you doing? How is your business going? What are you doing to improve your business? What are your actionable steps to, you know, to build your business? And I love that. I love the support, I love the encouragement, the ideas. There's just so many wonderful things that come out of going to in-person things. There's only so many things you can learn on YouTube or by listening to a podcast. And I appreciate y'all listening. I mean, I want you to listen. But if you get one thing from this, it is that if you're trying to build something and you feel stuck, you need to go be in the presence of other people who are building. Be around the kind of people who are doing what you want to be doing. And that will inevitably move you in the right direction. Everybody kind of pulls everybody else along, and you know, it you can sit and make excuses all day long as to why things aren't going the way you want them to go, or you know, you're Life is bad, or this negative thing, or that negative thing. And before long, all that negative self-talk literally becomes negative energy, which literally becomes negative actions in your life. And positive self-talk is what they also call words of affirmation, I guess. But when when I was growing up, the word was positive self-talk. The more you say positive things to yourself, and the more you look for the good, the more you will find the good. And the more good things will come to you from that process. It literally changes the energy of your life. So if you're really wanting to build something, find a place, find a community of people who are doing what you want to do, number one, who are living the way that you want to live, and it it can move you personally as a human being, not just a business person, but move you in the right direction and be a positive circle for for you to help be a positive energy circle because that is so important. So we're gonna wrap it up. And again, this was just an update. If you get a chance, listen to Nicole's podcast, listen to Jack Spearco. He talks about you know how to use AI to build your business and how to better organize yourself and just be a better person and to manage all of the crazy areas of your life just in a uh systematic way. And that has helped me tremendously. So with that, I hope you have a wonderful week. I'm going to pick up my son here in just a few minutes from uh search, which is a basically a religious retreat. So I'm gonna head out of here and go do that. And I hope that you all have a wonderful week. And to my babies and grandbabies, I love you big. Whatever you've got on the docket today, y'all, just remember you gotta keep it real.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

My daddy was a guitar picker, playing all the local clothes, and my mama was a waitress with it parking making with a turn.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

We didn't have much money out of the hop Living in a trade on the edge of Grandpa's and the nose within my home I rebuild a bit sound.