Bonus Episode - How starting a co-op farm gave me my sanity back!

Bonus episode life update, a bit of a rant about the stresses of farming, why co-op farming has worked for me, and how we are revitalizing the trade and barter system in our town!

Hannah Boggs (@hannahatthegardens) • Instagram photos and videos

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants: 0:00

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Global Stewardship Podcast. I'm recording very early in the morning. The roosters are crowing in the background, I wanted to give you guys this. Life update not just to talk about myself, but that I think is going to inspire people to transform their life in their homes, on their farms.

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If it's morning when you're listening to this, pull up a chair, drink some coffee. Just ignore my raspy morning voice. as we chat about. How I started a cooperative farm, how I went from working 60 plus hour weeks to now finding rest and contentment and bringing the romanticism back to farm life. How I host volunteers from all over the world and have switched my farm from being an absolute money pit to now something that's a village that. Supports people in our community, supports my family, and is just turning into something that is just a beautiful example of what we can do when we work together and trust in God's provision.

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I really want to see a future where farming is seen as the solution. I know it sounds crazy, but I truly believe that God wants to use farming. Yes, farming as the missing piece to solve our physical and mental health crisis as the key to heal our ecosystems and climate and to restore broken communities. I don't know about you, but most communities I've lived in and go through are pretty broken. After spending most of my childhood and young adult years witnessing the vibrancy of food and farming around the globe, I was inspired to start my own farm back in 2020. I really didn't set out to do this, but after a very short time, I realized that my goal was to see if a no spray no-till, hyper-local, truly natural minded farm could work. And not only has it worked and thrived, but it's been a model for how successful you can be when you work with natural systems instead of against them. And I'm not the only one. I had inspiration behind this because when you live travel work outside of the United States, it's not hard to see that the majority of the world has a much deeper relationship with the land and their food than and local farmers than most Americans do. By far, the biggest thing I've noticed over a decade a very extensive farm travel is that even with fewer resources and less quote unquote education, small scale farmers around the globe are healing the land beneath their feet, feeding the world, and bringing communities together. So my experience as a farmer, political science degree holder, lifelong outdoors, woman and farm traveler has led me here today highlighting farms of all shapes and sizes around the world that are doing it right. If you look around at our modern food systems and need some inspiration and encouragement, thank you for being here. I think this is the place for you joining me every week by listening to the Global Stewardship Podcast, the place where farmers who steward the land like God intended, are sharing their stories and diving deep into the big and nuanced issues that the world of food faces. If anything, I think this show. We'll teach you that how you farm can change the world and the farmers that you support can change the world. So I am diving in and sharing what's changed for me, especially in the recent year, i've truly never grown so much in such a short amount of time, and would love to see if this sparks something inside of you or causes some transformation on your farm. If you're a. Farmer or in your home, your homesteads? Just to give some background, here's what the last five years have looked like on my farm and for me. So just over five years ago, we moved to South Carolina to a new state. I'd never lived in new growing climate. I had no friends here. New place in the first few years of farming, I thought I had to do it all the vegetables, the animals, every animal, and this is a really common thing I've learned for beginning farmers, is they think that they have to take on all the enterprises and that it's not a farm. If you don't have the chickens and you don't have the pigs and you don't have a room and an animal and you don't have the vegetables and the orchards, and the list goes on and on and on. But I was one of those people who, you know, would jokingly say, like, my job can be pretty stressful at times, but at least it pays pretty bad and the hours are also pretty bad, just. Was one of those, like many that were stressing about finances, but also feeling like I was supposed to be making everything from scratch and doing the 101 other things by yourself. I now have realized that we can live in community and share these tasks the same way that humans have done for a literal millennia, the little house on the prairie, sunshine and rainbows. Farming fantasy has so many across the world working themselves to the bone. And many who go from the hostile culture of city life think that they're escaping it when they become homesteaders or farmers, they end up just trading 80 hour work weeks in the city for 80 hour work weeks in the country. That's just the rural equivalent of hustle culture. And that was me. Just like most other beginning farmers, homesteaders, what have you, basically running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But thinking that that's how it had to be. Then I finally found a program back then it was called five X Your Farm Sales. It was offered by Charlotte Smith, and in less than 10 weeks she helped me 10 x my farm sales. and really just teach me the mindset I needed to rekindle that passion for my farm, heal the parts of my marriage that were breaking because of my overworking on the farm and his not working any on the farm'cause he's not the farmer. Just so many things. And I have since actually become a certified coach through her coach certification program because of how transformative learning this mindset life coach strategy was for my life. And this is where it all kind of started changing for me. renewing my mind, rewiring the way that I think about everyday things, circumstances, situations. Then I became a mom, started really prioritizing health with having a home birth and anybody who's had a home birth, it changes your outlook on everything, food, medicine, health, and so just diving a whole lot deeper into better food into community, and I began having these revelations here in the us like we think that. Our individualism is so great, but our very identity is not independent or self decided, but it's a result of our relationship to other people, to our community. A lot of people think that community means a loss of individuality, but I would argue that the deeper your community relationships actually, the greater your opportunity to truly discover your full identity and having some of these thoughts. It started leading me into these ideas of what has now shaped the way we operate our farm, the way we've shaped our life, and it's what I want you to stick around on this episode and hear about. It may not be for you, but I'm sure that there are ways that you can implement some of this stuff in your own life that will absolutely be so exciting and transformative. Basically within a couple years of a period, I went from believing I had to do everything myself. Be the boss, be the farmer, have the farm store on our property, sell to grocery stores. Run the successful social media, do the podcast, all of these things by myself to now. I don't wanna do anything by myself. And I'm sure some of you are thinking that's so self-explanatory. She was just overworking overcommitting, But if you're thinking that, my guess is that you are not a farmer because the farmers out there can probably relate. It's a very individualistic career choice, as we've talked about in many other episodes. It's a special kind of person that wants to be a farmer, tend to the land, see all of their work come to life in fruition, and that's how a lot of us start out. But there's a reason that over 80% of farms fizzle out within the first three to five years because we cannot do it. It is unsustainable to try to do everything alone. We were never made to be alone. We were built for community. And so. I had to kind of like repent over my individualism and I started dreaming of a farm where I wasn't the only farm business, but could welcome many, many other farmers and farm businesses to the same property to operate. And I began with a single flower farmer with my now best friend Abby. And it was this partnership with Abby that made me realize all of this could be possible. My dreams of community, my dreams of revitalizing the trade and barter system in our town. It all started with Abby coming, bringing her flowers

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And of course there's ways to set it up where maybe you're charging a lease for fellow farmers or homesteaders. But in many cases, I've been able to work out agreements with the farmers on this property where it's been just mutually beneficial. For example, with Abby, before she joined our farm team, before we had flower farmers here, since we are a no spray farm, like completely no spray, not even organic sprays, We had to do so much companion planting, planting flowers and herbs that would deter pests and disease from our fields. And Abby came in and virtually did all of that work for us for free, because that was her business. And so it took all of that cost off of my plate, all of that planting time. Field prep time off of my hands. And so if you do companion planting, this might be something that might work for you. It is a great way to utilize these natural systems of different farm enterprises working together without you having to do all of it yourself. And not to mention, when you are marketing so many different products, it's very hard. It. In fact, in many cases, it's impossible to get to profitability with all of those things. And so a lot of farmers, you know, they're only profitable in one thing or they're, they're not usually not profitable in anything the first five to 10 years. so instead of previously trying to sell flowers, trying to sell eggs, trying to sell vegetables, being able to just focus on one main thing was revolutionary.

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And that first season with Abby was. Very eye-opening. It was perfect. There was nothing that went wrong, and I'd actually tried it before with a family member who had raised chickens on our farm and it didn't last. She decided that she didn't want to raise chickens anymore, and she'd moved her whole family up here to my town and then moved them back away to where they came from a couple years later into me. That was such a failure, and I thought. Man, maybe this isn't possible, but for them to have the complete opposite experience with somebody else, that I think that God really wanted to be there. And I don't think that the first experience that, that, in my definition, I considered a failure. I don't believe that God saw that as a failure but I knew that it, it obviously wasn't a perfect fit for the farm because she, she didn't stay and she didn't decide to give her life to this land. Like, I know that Abby's going to be here for decades and decades to come, and for me, that was my view of what a success would look like. Well, I started reaching out to more people and we'd had an older couple who'd been gardening the front of our farm, just to keep it looking really aesthetically pleasing, keeping the weeds at bay for customers, driving to our farm store, you know, they're like homesteading for their family on this property.. and then looking around and realizing, well, we've had beekeepers and beekeeper businesses here for several years also, and now we have a whole separate farmer who's running the farm store on our property. I don't even run the store anymore, have really anything to do with it. We just sell some of our stuff there. But taking that off my plate also, but still utilizing that building to feed people local food from our community. I no longer have to be there every day that the store is open, be on top of stocking it or making sure someone else was stocking it properly. I just passed that off completely to another local farmer I know there's farmers listening who are thinking, how could you ever do that? Because so many of us see our farms as our little babies that we want to be in full control over. We want full creative autonomy. We want. Ownership of all of the customers. And here I am with several different people, with several different farm businesses on the same land, and I'm inviting more and more and more. And the way that I see it is that this is the way that we're sustainable. We're, we're working in partnership. We're like all team players, and it's been incredible. Everyone is a perfect fit. And when you do find people who have that same vision to care for the land steward, the local environment, and truly transform the ground beneath your feet, feed the community, educate people about where their food can come from when they shop differently, it all starts to fall in line. And so seeing this start to be successful. Started giving me a whole new renewed sense of hope for how we can transform local food systems because it was feeling really daunting when it was just me in my little town or just so and so in their town and it doesn't feel so lonely and isolating and hard to keep up with orders and hard to grow enough food when you do have so many people who are so passionate about it and, and it's different than with employees, it is people who are taking initiative and putting their all into what they're doing the same way that you do as a farmer, because they're farmers too. They're farm business owners too. There's a whole different level of work ethic of passion that comes into play when it's people who want to do this truly for the rest of their lives, not just as a seasonal business or maybe a part-time gig. And the key with all of the people that we welcome to this land, none of them own property, like more than a backyard. So this is the only opportunity that they have or would've had to be farmers. and I think that that. So key because there is no reason to have all this land and to know that all these enterprises can beautifully and seamlessly work together the way that God created them to, like sheep follow the cattle and chickens follow the sheep, and all of their manure can be used for the vegetables and the vegetables benefit from the flowers and the flowers benefit from the bees. And then we can eat the honey and the eggs can be composted or that. The extra milk can be fed to the pigs. You know, all of these things. Many farmers think that they have to do it all themselves, but when you have a cattle farmer, then you have a sheep farmer, then you have the chicken farmer, and everybody has their own operation and business, and they're putting their full all into it and working solely on making that one thing profitable. Oh my goodness. The transformation that has happened and can happen. It's mind blowing and people can go on vacation because there's a community of people that care and can take over and do the chores responsibly and with their full effort and attention. I could go on and on. And of course, if anybody ever has any questions about how I made this work, if they want to implement it in their community, I am an open book. I would love for you to message me and chat about this. I've spoken about this at different events, to different groups. Would, uh, absolutely love to just continue the conversation about cooperative farms anywhere if you have a convention. Total tangent there, but, uh, just love going into depth about these things. But yeah, the desire to have that deeper community centered around better food, better stewardship of our land. I'd had this dream, but I didn't start the dream originally when I wanted to because I didn't own any of this farmland. We had only ever been leasing it and borrowing it, and it was my fear, my fear of having the land just ripped out from under us, that kept me from really making the investments I wanted to make from welcoming all of the families and farm business owners that I wanted to, to this land. But then everything changed when I went to England. Although we'd been starting to welcome all these people, like I didn't really kick it into full fledged high gear until only recently I went to England and learned about the tenancy farming system where something like 16% of farmers don't own any of the land that they farm, but then just under 50% lease or borrow. They their tenant farmers on some of the land that they farm. So only about 50% of farmers actually own all the land that they farm. But I spent every single day with a farmer in England. I was traveling from farm to farm learning underneath them, doing their photography, videography, helping them with their marketing like I do, just in exchange for their time, them feeding me, hosting me. It was a beautiful experience. And the greatest takeaway I think that I had, well, one of the top two was that. They were passionate, so passionate about stewarding land that they didn't even own and putting their entire life's work into land that was not their own. That is so such a foreign concept to Americans. Again, we are taught so individualistic. We're taught the American dream of owning your own land, building your own castle, your own fortress. And then you go to England where half the people that I was visiting don't own a single acre yet they were some of the best land stewards I've ever encountered anywhere in the world. That kind of changed everything for me. Because I'd been spending years on this property that I'd been graciously allowed to use and steward, and I had not been putting my all into it. Even as an organic, natural minded, regenerative farmer who's supposed to be all about giving back to the land I was, I was giving back in many, many ways. I've, you know, I've seen the bird populations return. I've seen the soil heal in many parts of our farm. I wasn't making the pomegranate tree investments. I wasn't making the investment in permanent farm fencing, different things that would've really helped our farm grow and thrive in much greater ways. Earlier, I was putting those on the back burner until I could have land that I owned and that I had that safety net of ownership with. But yeah, like I said, England changed everything and so I just started making investments here. I

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I also realized that maybe other people wanted to make investments into this property too, that I wasn't the only one. Having these revelations that you don't have to own a piece of land to steward it like we were called to at the beginning of time. So I started putting my all into this piece of land and started inviting others to join me while being very clear that. I don't own the land and it could be taken from us at any moment. And people came and

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then I got word that we could buy the house on the farm. And originally, you know, we'd been offered this house before. But the story was always that, you know, we wouldn't be able to farm like we wanted to here. But I think that once I had that trust and I had learned from those people in the uk, I started truly putting my all into the land here in a way that I hadn't before and proving myself. And then we got that opportunity and. Along with it, the chance to farm the land here in a way that had never been offered to us before. And I think that that is so so convicting because what was I thought holding me back? I was just holding myself back from these opportunities, if that makes sense.

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Looking back now, it's so clear that I was acting out of fear and not trusting God's provision here on this land and operating out of a state of, almost like an impoverished mindset, I guess, is the only words I can put to it. Not listening to my husband who told me that God was gonna make it all work out. He'd been telling me that since we got here day one.

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So all of a sudden, this dream of community sufficiency and having a huge cooperative farm here in my town not only just came to life, but. Within a couple months period, knew that I was going to be on this land for probably the rest of my life, and I have been working so hard over the past several months, not only Liam and I to move into this house on the farm and sell our other house, it's just now getting on the market. But I've been working hard to really. Clear up this vision for how I want this cooperative farm to operate and thrive for years to come. Because I do want people like Abby to feel welcome here for decades and decades and I would love to grow old with these fellow farmers that are coming to this property. Like we talked about in the recent podcast episodes with guests from Uganda, we have such a big lie of self-sufficiency here in Western countries like the us, Canada, Australia, even some in the uk. But how we build community sufficiency is by focusing on our own strengths and seeing neighbors do the same, and then coming together and working together. I'd obviously known this for ages, but I thought, eh, we live in the 21st century. We're too far gone. Nobody wants to farm together. Nobody wants to trade in barter. Who wants to shell peas on the porch as a neighborhood anymore. So I thought that the burden to grow and do it all was still gonna be on me. And turns out, as we've talked, it wasn't, it was just another of the many lies about food and farming that I've believed, that I was told over the years, and this is so common in the food and farming world, because we're taught that industrialized farming is the answer because we have to feed the world because people don't wanna farm anymore. That's actually totally not true. And the more I do this the more I realize that people all around the world are fighting for their right to homestead, are fighting for their right to farm on smaller scales, small scale farmers are still the people who are feeding the world in most countries around the globe. It is just our. Western notion of quote unquote feeding the world that we are pushing onto other countries onto people we are putting into legislation that's that's hindering small farmers like myself. And so this realization is what slowly shaped our farm from a one woman. Madhouse suffering hard to keep up with unsustainable operation to a cooperative farm featuring several independent businesses, homesteading families, community gardeners, and still looking for more. The switch has also helped me totally shift from spending hundreds of dollars at the grocery store each month to now. I rarely need a visit there, maybe for a missing item every few weeks, just. Just last week Willie and I went to the grocery store for the first time and probably a month, uh, after all of the tragedy that happened with Charlie Kirk and the shooting Evergreen, you know, um. Liam and I came to South Carolina from Evergreen, so something that felt really crazy and scary and close to home at that high school. I just wanted to go to the grocery store and treat myself to a treat and some of my favorite things and um, I know that's not what you're really supposed to do when you're super sad, but that's what I did. Liam wasn't home and I'd been praying and praying and I just wanted to treat, and, but just all that to say. That's the only reason we had to go to the grocery store for a month because we now trade and barter for so many things. We now have the ability to grow more vegetables because so much of my energy is not on. All these other enterprises, we now could because we host volunteers from Wolff, the worldwide organization of organic farmers. We host volunteers from around the world. We buy a lot of things in bulk. We buy our rice in bulk from Marsh Hin Mill, our very first podcast episode was with Greg Johns man from Marsh in, um, we buy locally made pasta in bulk, beans, peas. We trade the vegetables that I grow for everything from locally made sourdough to homemade laundry detergent to kombucha. Oh my goodness, the best kombucha. I trade veggies for this amazing kombucha, not because I don't know how to read a simple laundry detergent recipe or Kombucha Brewing 1 0 1 on Google. Because when I put all of that on my plate, which I've been there, done that and put all of it on my plate, true living went out the window. I don't think that we're all like, this is a new, really new revelation for me over the past couple years, but I do not think that we're all supposed to do all of these things ourselves. And yeah, it's definitely interesting and it's, it's cool to know how to do them. It's great to be able to have homemade stuff, but to do all of that alone, people were, people have lived thousands and thousands of years not doing it alone. So kind of bringing back this sense of neighbor community where we are able to support each other and help each other out. In a way that doesn't feel gross and, um, extractive and never using cash money, it's so beautiful and we find that we really appreciate each other in a much more real, authentic way. I and I now get to support others in a way that's really approachable for me, which is through my farm production and. To get to encourage other farmers, other producers in their incredible systems where they get to farm organically, biodynamically, regeneratively, and produce wonderful things without the need to necessarily produce it all myself. Whether it's grass fed beef or dairy trading for a lot of those things. And right now we're trying to partner with people who actually want to bring cows to the farm here. not in exchange for lease money, but in exchange for beef. And I know that seems like such a crazy mind blowing thing, to not work in money that way, But it has been so successful in finding the right people who want to join in on this thriving community is really amazing. And it's so cool to watch this land come to life and it's full glory. It's so cool. And another big thing is that, you know, I, I came here to South Carolina. Like I said, had no friends. I didn't know anyone here, so most of my friends were through like kind of superficial church relationships.

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Up until switching to a House Church this year.

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We went to a church that we didn't feel super connected in, and then the rest of our relationships were customer relationships. But there was still that underlying, like their paying, paying us, you know, we have to perform a certain way because. We are reliant on their cash dollars. And a lot of those people, since we've stopped and left a lot of grocery stores and we've passed on the farm store to someone else, and now we pretty much solely operate on a trade and barter system, a lot of those people have truly become like friends and family in a way that they would not have been because of that, that like mental limitation that was there before. Now we are really truly trading helping each other in a way that feels so mutually, Ben, that feels so mutually beneficial. And it might just be something that has to be felt and seen to understand, even if you are listening and you're not a farmer, okay, say you're living in a tiny apartment and you have no access to grow your own food. Community sufficiency can be the act of shopping from the farmer's market and supporting local farmers, maybe offering to trades for something that you. Do inside your home, whether it's canning or baking, or, I've had many seamstresses offer to help repair things actually one of our wolfers right now, they're wanting to trade for handmade hand sewn linen clothes.'cause linen is the, like the healing fabric. Community sufficiency is just the act of building a resilient community that works together. I have never felt more food secure in my life since doing this. I have never felt or seen. More true food sovereignty, food resilience, which is a very real conversation we need to be having these days as so many consumers have absolutely no control over their food system. And when disasters do strike like the hurricanes last year, or like supply chain shortages. Many consumers are left totally helpless. There's nothing that they can do about it. And having these tight knit cooperative farms that are serving so many people in so many ways and that are truly sustainable.'cause it's not just one or two crazy people trying to work the whole thing by themselves. That was me. It is so much more. I said resilient, and it's going to last for decades and decades and decades to come. You'd be so surprised. I had the mindset that, oh, nobody's gonna wanna do this. We live in 2025. Everyone's so individualistic, everybody's just relying on the grocery store. But it turns out so many people are open to partnerships and opportunities. You just have to ask. For example, I have on Facebook Marketplace a couple ads right now for one for community garden spaces. Um, just says low cost cost. The cost changes based on the square footage of the garden that you use. You just have to pitch in for water, be willing to trade veggies, and become part of this thriving community. Another is for a big call, ask for families who want to go in on a dairy cow. Together there's several families that we've found we want, we're aiming for seven or eight families who want to take over a dairy cow, dairy herd together. One family to milk one morning a week. Trade off A lot of the big, the biggest problem with dairy is that many families are no longer able to go on vacation. But if you go in on it with eight families that see eye to eye and are on the exact same page, ready to follow the same guidelines, same rules. You know, one day a week is not a huge commitment and. It's a lot easier to consume one day a week worth of dairy than seven days a week. So just things like that. I've got ads out like that on Facebook, and you would be totally mind blown by how many hundreds and hundreds of people I have received messages from, requests from, uh, creative ideas from, and of course, there's not gonna be hundreds and hundreds that join in on this mission because we have to be really picky with who we do welcome into this because we're not just looking for people who are. On a whim or they're living that fully romanticized version of farming and are not willing to put in the work, but we're looking for people who are in it for the long haul, really naturally regeneratively, organically minded like the rest of us here are. And,, I think that's. Exactly how we're gonna find the, the next few people. And you know, we're having a conversation right now. We've found somebody through Facebook marketplace who is going to cover the whole cost of fencing an entire eight acre big parcel for us. And so that's just. Pretty incredible to me and, uh, something that I never would've considered several years ago, and that I know sounds so woo woo, wacky to some of you. And, but it's beautiful and it's working and this land has never been happier or healthier and there's never been so much potential for changing our community for the better. I have been so abundantly blessed with this communal lifestyle. I was just visiting my hometown recently in Montana and spent time on the ranch where I really spent like half of my childhood. My childhood best friend lived on this horse ranch and she was, they were my safe place, totally. Their life always looked a good bit different to me than the people in Big Sky, the nearest town, which has changed a lot, by the way. If you've been there and visited there, that's not how it looked when I was little. But their life. It was always so interesting and they just lived so much slower and increasingly so. As time has gone on and things have become more and more developed in that area, I think about their life and how I wish people could at least get a glimpse of that life and the opportunity that's out there if you're willing to do things a bit differently. You know, they were living the ranch life while people in town were hustling and driving into Bozeman. Working the ski resorts and doing all the real estate, and they were living ranch life and so many people never got a glimpse of that life. And that's no judgment on their part, they've always welcomed so many people into that lifestyle as they've done for me, hosting me at their home week, after week after week. But the magic of. That life and getting to experience that time on the ranch and be welcomed into that has really had me feeling so grateful for the chance to even be invited into that and really convicted to continue to invite people into my life Here on my farm, they on the ranch, they are easily the greatest reason, even above traveling to farms around the world. They're the greatest reason that. I ever got into farming in the first place because I saw the chance at a unique and special life outdoors when I spent time with them and just fell in love with that kind of lifestyle so I can only pray that I can offer that to children in our community, to other people, and by bringing all these other farmers into the mission of what we're doing here and offering them a chance at utilizing farmland that unfortunately where we are, we're 30 minutes outside of Charlotte. Farmland is developing like crazy and a lot of farmland is not affordable because it's being sold to developers. And so for many. Partnering with us is the only opportunity that they have to steward the land and to heed this call that they feel like many from the creator of the universe, the first. Uh, instruction for humans was to care for the land, but if there's no land to care for, a lot of people have that void, and so to help fill that and offer people that opportunity, and then each one of those people, each farm business, each homesteading family, then brings more people into this, welcomes more people to see where their food comes from to become part of this trade and bartering community. It's something that's really special. Recently, there was a post that popped up for me on social media, and it was a girl that I've known we've worked together distantly on some projects, but she had posted something about how homesteading was the worst thing that she has ever done because she could no longer travel, no longer go out on the weekends, and she probably fell for the slow living lie of farming, but became one of those people where there was nothing slow about it. It was this rugged individualist, bootstrapping going at it alone, living off the land. American Frontier fantasy. That was totally, it's just a myth that's been popularized to support some kind of agenda that keeps us all exhausted and divided. And it is truly in community that we are the strongest through mutual aid and villages and cities where people are coming together to grow community gardens and to support one another. Of course, her homesteading journey was the worst thing that she ever did in her life because she was doing it all alone. Overwhelmed. I've been there myself. Those first couple years were like the hardest. They weren't the worst because I've just loved it and. This is what I'm called to do, but it was the hardest, the hardest years of my life when all you can do is struggle to keep up with the chores go to sleep at night, hear the storm coming and worry all night long about what's gonna happen to your animals because you don't have enough help. The next morning you're gonna have to go and lift trees off their structures all alone. We're not meant to do this alone. Guys. If, if there's anything that you guys. Could get from this rant of an episode. It's just that, and I know it's just me today and there's not a guest on here, but I would just love for you to hear where I'm coming from as we move forward in the next couple months of the Global Stewardship Podcast because in a lot of the interviews that I do, I am coming from this perspective of a new kind of farm that many Americans have gotten away from, but that. Farmers all around the world, they still live and breathe this every single day. Not only the people from Uganda that were just on the show, Rebecca and Rigo, but the people from other African countries that are coming on. Folks from Asia, different people from Pacific Island countries, even farmers from many communities in Europe that are still so naturally and community minded. A lot of those people are coming on the show, and it is just time to open up these conversations because I actually think that this is one of the greatest ways that we can transform our food system, moving from such a prioritization of industrial, large scale farming that is frankly, in many ways, many cases, almost every case, wreaking havoc in some way, shape or form on the land, on the environment, on our communities, back to those resilient local food systems. And so, yeah, rant over maybe, I guess just something I'll leave you with is that the world tells us we need status and material things, and especially in the farming world. Oh my goodness. They tell you, you need the newest tractor, you need the most acreage, you need to do it all yourself. You know, that's, that's kind of the pillar for success in the American farming world. But when we exchange those material things, those standards of success for deeper meaning, we find a life richer than anything we could have ever imagined. And that is what I have been finding. That's what I've found. All of a sudden, I don't long for anything, I don't have anymore. I don't want to leave this place. I don't want to ever stop doing this. This farm is thriving and it is about to just take off in a way that never would've been possible with just me. And so maybe you guys will open up your minds to bringing some people on your team, whether it's just inviting a beekeeper to your property or a flower farmer to your property, or if you don't have a farm, don't have land connecting with a local farmer, seeing if they want you to landscape the front 20,000 square feet in exchange for. You know, taking home your vegetables, whatever it may be. I'm happy to help you brainstorm exciting opportunities. They're all over the place. Wherever you live, there are no limitations. And there are people who have been secretly thinking these things behind closed doors, feeling weird, feeling like they're the only ones. Just like I was thinking nobody would ever wanna do this. And sure enough, I'm finding hundreds of people who do. So I know you're gonna find the same. Come back next Tuesday because we're going to be chatting about installing greenhouses in Northern Canadian indigenous communities where they have never grown food before. It's a fascinating conversation that I felt really blessed to have and learned a lot from. Thank you so much as always for listening to another episode of the Global Stewardship Podcast. I appreciate every one of you. Please send me an email if you want coaching. Like what I learned from Charlotte Smith that transformed my life. I'd be happy to offer it to you for low cost or free. We can trade and barter. But um, yeah, just love to connect with you guys and thank you for sticking through this episode, even though it was just little old me. Uh, we will see you next Tuesday.