Episode 11: How to Overcome Burnout on the Homestead

Let's be real - farming and homesteading are a blast, but can also very exhausting.  With all of the joy also come pain.  Sometimes, even with lush gardens, we can feel a little barren inside our hearts.  Both activity and rest are natural parts of our built in rhythms, but so is rest - deep and genuine rest.  Once and a while though, we each face burn, but for whatever reason, homesteading burnout just seems to hit different.  

In this podcast episode, we'll talk about some of the common causes of farming burnout, both gleaning from our own experiences, but also the many homesteaders we are deeply connected with.  Then we'll share some of the practical ways have have found success in overcoming burnout, which ultimately helped us navigate through the journey... finding our passion again at the other side.  If you (or a loved one) has ever felt the pain of burnout while farming... you understand how challenging it can be.  But how we walk through it makes all the difference, especially for our family and loved ones.   Join us on this journey as we talk about a reality that we each face at some point in time.   

Link to the food forest designer website! 
https://permaculturefx.com/how-to-plant-a-food-forest-part-4-installing/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Obsessive Plants podcast. I'm David. I'm Obsessive Plants with my co-host here.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

My name is Chris, and I am in my happy place with my matcha and my wonderful mug by my friend uh Jeshua, the mind of the leaf. Um, so today I'm excited because this is a very casual, chill podcast. Yep. Um, I will still talk fast, but it is. It is how I talk. So today we're gonna talk about overcoming burnout in the homestead, around the food forest, in the garden. Just the farm in general. Because let's be real, burnout's a real thing. Like it in it when it hits, it always seems to hit hard and hit at the least opportune time. It's like if I could plan the right time for burnout, it's never when it hits. It's always like during the slow season, so you know, winter or in our case summer. Wouldn't it be nice if burnout happened then? No, it's like, no, burnout always happens when chickens just had chicks or cows just started calving, you know, or the food forest is full of weeds. It's like the the most inopportune time. Exactly. But I think, you know, for all of us, it is not is burnout going to hit, it's more when is it going to hit? Because I think the reality is, as Americans specifically, we don't pace ourselves very well. Yeah. Like we're we're really bad at it. Like if you look at the major great religions of the earth, they all have days of like Sunday Family Day or Friday, Saturday, Sabbath, you know, or Shabbat. Like there's always rest built in. And I feel like Americans just kind of go, nah, I'm gonna go full force every single day of the week, 365 days of the year. You know, I'm in it to win it. And nobody can do that. You know what I mean? Like nobody can live that way, let alone farm that way with family, with animals, with kids, with all the things.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

And it's hard because nowadays, you know, even if you would like to, it's you you have to be so intentional about it. Yeah. You know, because everybody else is gonna be like, oh, it's the weekend after you've been in a full week of work. Let's go party. And it's like, you know, sometimes it's more exhausting to go out and party and all that other stuff than it is to just do the normal work. I'm 40.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Partying for me is like staying up until nine o'clock. Exactly. Exactly. I just can't, I can't stay up that late anymore. But I also know myself is I am I am very much an introvert. I don't get my energy from being out with people. And I, you know, people often mistaken for people that are quiet. Oh, they're the introverts. Well, maybe they actually get their energy from being out and about. I would say I'm the opposite. I'm very vocal when I'm with people, but then I go for like four days and I say nothing. The only thing that I pretty much say is like I'm the same. I talk to the dog and like, Vala, stop eating peacock poop. And that's like the only thing I'll say for like four days. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

A lot of people to me are like, yo, like they'll call me up and they're like, Oh, did I wake you? Like, no, I just haven't spoken anything since I got up today. Exactly. Just not made a single noise.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Exactly. I know. So for you, what do you do? What do you do to rest and recover? Like, if you get a couple days off and you got to choose, like, paint a picture for me of like what would you do with like three days off? And we didn't talk about this before. I'm just it just came to mind. What would David do? So you magically now have three days off. Someone else is gonna cover responsibilities. So, what what would be like this is how I would paint my three days of rest.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

I definitely think like you should always start with like that first day of kind of being like a lazy day if you can. Whether that's you know, just getting that extra hour sleep if you can, or you know, sometimes you have to get up anyways because you still have to do a few responsibilities regardless. But then, you know, maybe go back to bed for an hour or something like that. Or four. Well that's just that that's that's an alternative advice of just sleep all day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then now you're, you know, people think you're depressed or something like that. So you gotta be careful. Yeah, no. Um, then that second day is you know, kind of draw, get kind of pull yourself back, whether that's you know, fully doing something that you don't wouldn't normally do. So if you're the kind of person that goes out, stay in. If you're the kind of person who stays in, go out. You know, do something that gives uh a lot difference, a lot of difference to your path, or find something that uh is the same activity but is uh alternative viewpoint, or you know, whether it's like, oh, you're a farmer and you still want to be on a farm, well, okay, go visit somebody else's farm. Because now it's not your responsibility, you're there as a tourist, right? And that can it can you can still enjoy some of that farm aesthetics and stuff like that without being the one responsible, and you don't have to think about all their work that they need to be doing, you can just enjoy it for what it is, and you can see you can also learn things too. I mean, just because you're taking a break doesn't mean you're not still learning.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Yeah, so that's your day two. So you rested day one, you're sleeping, day two, maybe go visit a farm, change it up, like day three. What would you do? Um probably get back to work because then I'll be like, oh, well, I've taken too much time off.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

I can't rest more than two days. I'm done. Sorry. No, no, that's funny. But yeah, probably more, probably more resting and getting like that mental um image of like, okay, what needs to be done, but kind of in a way that's you're not actually working, you're not trying to stress yourself out about the work, but it's like, okay, I can hit the ground running without needing to do anything. So it's like, okay, well, if you know you have to do laundry or whatever, that way you don't have to do it later, even though you're still working, it's you're just prepping yourself so that way you can hit the ground running without actually making it too intensive. Because it's good, you know, if you have nothing else to do and laundry is the only thing you have to do today. Laundry's not bad. But you know, if you're out in the farm wrangling a chicken that got out and you still need to do laundry and you're dirty, and you know, so it's like, and then you forget your laundry, and so you have to wash it again. That's a lot more stressful than you know, okay. Today's my day where I just plan stuff out, I sit on the table, physical rest, maybe mental stimulation.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

No, that makes sense. Yeah, I think for me, I'm a I'm similar in that I need day one to dial down because I think my brain is a lot like the highway. It's kind of like the highway of my heart, I guess you could say. And it takes me a full day just to quiet the highway and to like fully dial down. I used to go a lot to this place called Conception Abbey. It was this um Benedictine monastery in Conception, Missouri. And it would literally take me one or two full days to get my brain to shut up. Like I just need to dial down. And then I feel like for me, if I could have three days, I'd do day one is dial down, Conception Abbey, go to a monastery somewhere. Um, and then probably day two for me would be like puttering. I just get all these things on my list, and y'all know me, I'm a checklist person. I love to just tick the boxes off or whatever. Um, and so for me, it's like if I could just go in and have a day to just putter on projects. My dad and I, we are the and my brother too, we are such putters. We could just take weeks and just putter on things and go, here's this project, here's that. I'm gonna go clean all of the tools in the toolbox and re-oil the shovels and sharpen the chainsaw blade. Like I just love putter projects, and that is restful for me. Because that that right there sounds like a lot of work to me. Oh, I love, I love it. And I I may not even finish all of them, but I'll start a lot of them and just tick a few things off the list. And then probably for me, definitely the third day, I would be opening up my planner. I'm a hard planner person. I journal, I use the passion planner. Um, and you know, and I've used it for probably 10 years, and I just love to journal and plan things out, goal setting and just going, okay, God, what do you want me to be doing the next month or the next quarter? And just kind of getting things back into focus, I think is how I would spend my third day. So that'd be me. When we um so when we think about burnout, and let's be honest, we have quite a few friends right now that are really on the journey of burnout. I don't want to say they're dealing with burnout because burnout is not like a cancer.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

It's yeah, it's very different for everybody. You know, the reasons can be completely different. Yeah. I mean, and yeah, for some people it's they don't want to do it anymore. There's some people who it's like, how can I do it differently? And some people it's like, I just need a break, but it you know, when it comes to farm stuff, you can't really take a break. So it's you can't, you can't.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

But I think it's important to realize burnout is not a disease for us, it's just part of our journey. And every part of a journey looks different. You know, when you're going on a road trip, not every point of the road trip is highway driving 70 miles an hour. Sometimes you're pulling off at a roadside park or Ripley's believe it or not, or you're pulling off at this weird farm stand down the road, or you gotta stop for the night and get gas and rest. Like that's part of the journey, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

That's something like an analogy I just thought of while you were talking. Um, I feel like burnout is that same cycle of like giving your chickens a heat lamp at night so they keep producing eggs. Yeah. It's like, okay, you can do that, but it's just stressing out the bird when really that should be a time of rest. And maybe burnout for you is just it's not that you're necessarily done, but it's your body and mind telling you, hey, this is a time to cycle into something a little different, change it up.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

And those circadian rhythms for both chickens and the rest rhythms for us are super important. And I think that's when we get into an imbalance, is we leave that heat lamp on for too long, and then our body is stressing, you know. So well, let's talk a little bit about like what for food foresters and homesteaders, what are the most common causes that you've seen um that cause burnout or that get people on that trajectory, you know, of the journey? Because it's gonna come back around, the road's gonna reconnect later on, but like what are some of the causes of that kind of segue in the journey into oh I'm in the burnout mode.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

I think a good uh a very common one is people doing way too much way too soon. You know, they kind of over or underestimate what they want to do or are willing to do. Um, whether that's going to your local farm store and looking at all the chicks and saying, Oh yeah, I can handle 80 of those. Well, you know, yeah, 80 chicks ain't hard to handle, but 80 full chickens, it's a bit different story. Um, or that's you know, planting out your garden too big and suddenly you know you have more weeds than tomatoes. Exactly. Um, and just kind of getting out of hand too quickly before you've kind of assessed what's the way to do it, or even just uh over enthusiasm.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Sometimes enthusiasm can cause you the most stress because you're you're so excited because you see a you know a farm that's maybe twice your size, three times your size, and you're like, oh, I could do that. And yeah, you probably can. Yeah, but you know, there they they went through that whole cycle to get there. And so by jumping straight in to try to match them, sometimes it doesn't work. It causes some hard causes.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, and I think in a lot of households, people have one person that is all gung-ho of we're gonna have chickens and a garden and a food forest and a whatever, and then there's another person in the household, a spouse or whatever, that's going, Okay, well, here we go. And they may not be fully on board for that, you know, and so that's too much too soon, but it's also too much weight with maybe not enough team, not enough people that have buy-in to the vision to go, this is where our family or our house or our farm is supposed to go. They've got too much too soon and not enough team to help balance to get that vision where it needs to go, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 11:17

And and that can take so many different forms. Um, I know me and my wife, we're very, very different people. Um, even though we share a common goal of like, yes, we want the farm, we want, you know, animals, we want this sort of thing. Um, she would literally die if I if she had to do all the manual labor when it came to it. She can't do the heat, um, she can't do a lot of the physical labor. Um, not that she can't do those athletic things, but yeah, she just can't handle the way the climate we're in. She probably can if we're in like Iceland or something, but I can't die in the cold.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

So, you know, it's like it's it's a catch point too. Yeah, but she does balance you. I think one of the neat ways, and I'll just share this. I've been hearing you guys on the phone the last day or two, and David's talking about like, you know, the fruit trees, and we'll do this with the horses, and you know, they're both kind of talking about this new cat that they're getting, which is like speaking Chinese to me. Um, but as they're talking, she goes, Well, David, I want more pretty flowers, and what about this flower and this flower? And David's going, Nope, nope. But I do feel like she is right in bringing you into balance of like the productivity with the beauty and the rest. And she's doing really well at like bringing your household, you know, into a place of balance, which I think is really beautiful. You each have your own passion.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

And and and context that you're not getting is in most cases, it's yeah, I'm saying no while we're on the phone. That's just because it's the third or fourth time I've said no. Well, well, that's the thing, is it's not really so much a no, it's just not right now. Yeah, she picks plants and flowers that look pretty, but she's looking at like more northern flowers um or flowers that are in our zone, but they are very climated. So they're fine for spring flowers up north. Yeah. But down here, they're not a summer flower. Not a summer. They're a early spring winter flower.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

But Hannah, I got you.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Don't worry. So it's like, okay, yeah, we, you know, are gonna do the flowers next year. Yeah, yeah. But right now, it's the middle of summer. They're just gonna immediately get diseased, and then I'm out there spending hours trying to keep these poor things alive. Yeah, it's just all about the right time.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Yep. The time and knowing you guys are a good team and you're gonna find a way to balance it for you. But for people that don't balance it, that does cause that um that trajectory into the burnout thing. I also think shared goals. Shared goals, yeah. And I think that that's another really good reason is sometimes families or household, they're not all on the same page for the vision. And when they're not on the same page, the cost is too powerful for the vision. So I think by that I mean not just the cost financially, like it's gonna cost us too much money, dear spouse, to do this food for us. We're not spending $20,000 to do a food for us, sure. But there's also the cost of time, of resources, of energy levels. And I mean, you know, that's all a cost for that vision.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

I mean, and yeah, money is always like a major factor with everything, of course. But I feel like money's more of just the underlying issue, like a symptom rather than the actual cause. Because, you know, the only reason money would be an issue is because oh, you need to spend time not doing this in order to make enough money. Yeah, but a lot of times like money is not necessarily the issue, it's that you don't have enough time to do it. Right. You don't have enough energy to do it. Yep. Um, because the money is just another resource that you need, whether it's you don't have enough mulch, money, whatever. Yeah, but it's that willing to dedicate that time. Are they willing to do if you you know have a spouse? Um, is there something that they like to do that could take um difficulties and straints off you in order for you to do that? If you both like me and my wife, you know, I'm not gonna I'm gonna be out there with the shovel. She's not, but she's more willing to do other things, she's more willing to buy me a shovel, you know. It's like right, and she doesn't mind because that's where she excels and we're still moving forward together. However, you know, you can have that differently.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

But if you don't have that shared vision and you know, and those steps forward, those wins along the way, the new shovel, the flower that you know just bloomed, those things are really important to help keep us out of burnout too. It's like I I've seen a couple food foresters in the last year that they got burned out because they didn't see enough fruit quickly. They needed to see like productivity, and they were like, Oh, it's a failure. All I got were a couple mulberries. And it's like, hey, friend, you planted a tree this big. It's gonna take a couple years, and that's okay, you know, three to five years.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Yeah, and I I part-time at a uh an edible fruit tree nursery. Uh, I'm not gonna say who you probably know who it is, but I'm not gonna say just for the client's anonymity. But there's many times where I'm helping out there and you have clients come in and they're like, Oh, I want fruit. I'm like, okay, well, do you need it right now or do you need it later? And they're like, Well, I just I just want fruit. I'm like, Well, yeah, your little trees are gonna produce more long term, but your big trees are gonna produce right now. It's like you're like, Oh, I need it right now. All right.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

And it's like, okay, 30-gallon avocado tree, $285 or whatever, you know. Yeah, it's a lot more than that. Yeah, yeah. So it and it does, it's important to weigh those costs and go, what things do I need to put a little more money into to get fruit quicker, like an avocado or a mango, or what things like mulberries are gonna produce for you really fast. So I think having some successes that first year is important. But as new food foresters, I think it's also important to set your mindset right and go, you know what, it's gonna take a year to survive, a year to grow, a year to thrive, and five years until these trees are really at a mature state to where you're getting maximum productivity from them. And it's important to keep those expectations. You're not gonna be overflowing with the cornucopia on your table year two. It's just not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

And and sometimes I think it's it's about adjusting for micro success. Um, you know, it's like, okay, if you go you need a ton of blueberries because you want to be making jam and selling them as like a you know farmer's market type thing. Yeah, that's cool. And that's fine, plant them out. But maybe plant a few in pots that you can fertilize and all this other stuff close to the house. That way, you know, if you have kids who like eating the berries and that's kind of like your uh grounding to that uh activity, you can still have that very quickly, and you can still have that little success of oh, we're we made one jar of blueberry jam, right? And that's for the family, versus if you have them all planted out and they're taking that three or four years to you know really thrive, it can be hard to just stare at these blueberry plants that aren't producing anything.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

It's like when are they gonna get me fruit? Exactly. Yeah, that's super hard.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

So trying to time those micro successions just to kind of keep that invigoration.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Little steps are still steps in the journey, you know. And so I think you know, there's a lot of causes, you know, we could probably talk for 25 more minutes on just the causes of burnout, but I think the the reality is that burnout is going to happen and it's okay. And I think that heart posture when we do experience burnout is important that we posture ourselves in a place that we can accept burnout or tiredness rather. We can accept the fact I am tired and I do need to rest. And the it's important to lift our eyes up and look forward instead of looking back on I failed on this, I didn't do this, I didn't wood chip, now the weeds are too thick, and this chicken passed away and whatever. It's like, you know what? Stop looking backward, eyes up, look forward, and how do I engage in actual rest?

SPEAKER_01 18:24

Yeah, and sometimes the that that resting period can be extremely helpful if you want to still continue. And a lot of times the burnout is, and at least for me, I know I still want to be moving forward, but I just I can't get excited about it anymore, you know, or I can't uh find myself moving forward. So sometimes that just taking a break, finding a way to take a break, reanalyze the situation. How can I move this forward? Yeah, you know, like with me personally, so it was uh this last year was I wasn't at the farm very much. So it really provided me opportunities where it's like, okay, I've pulled back a little bit, I don't have the time to work on it. Right, right. And so it's like, well, what is the things I really truly need? You know, instead of being disappointed that, like, oh, my mulberry's got, you know, nematodes in their dying or whatever. Yeah. It's like, okay, well, what's what's the real issue here? Well, the real issue is I need them to be healthier. So I need you know, overstory trees because the ones underneath other trees are healthy and fine. So it's like, okay, I need to I need to pull back. I made the big mistake of I want to all fruit trees because ultimately you need more than fruit trees. So for me, it was like, okay, no more fruit trees. Heck with the fruit trees, we'll just work on building everything else up, but then we'll add them back later. Yeah. But without that pulling back and you know, getting the right perspective, I wouldn't have done that because I would have just been focused on it's not fruiting. Well, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

And I think a lot of people, when they when they experience that, they get frozen. They get frozen in the fear that, well, I can't stop because if I stop doing X, Y, and Z on the farm, this is gonna die, this is gonna be overtaken, this is never gonna produce fruit, this is gonna look bad, and the neighbors are gonna be mad. They get frozen in fear and they get paralyzed. It reminds me of there was uh the old books in the 70s, Frank Herbert's Dune. There's like the new movies out now, which are pretty good. And in the the books, there is the litany against fear. I don't think they've even said it yet in the movies, but the phrase that they use is I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer. It's the little death that causes total obliteration. So I will face my fear, I will let it pass through me. And when it passes, only I will remain. And I feel like sometimes that's a posture I need in the food forest or on the homestead or the farm is I'm not gonna worry. I'm not gonna worry about how I'm gonna manage this. Is this gonna be okay? Is my food forest gonna look good enough? I just need to face it and let it pass through me. Like I need to dial myself down, quiet the highway of my heart again, get that perspective like you're talking about, and go, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. My food forest does not have to be Instagram ready for everybody all the time. That's okay, you know?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

And and yeah, leaning on the social media aspect that I think has made a lot of people infinitely worse when it comes to this kind of anxiety. Is it's very easy to see the success of everybody on social media and their pretty gardens. And it's really especially when a lot of times they're too far away to visit, or they're you know, maybe private and you can't really visit them. Yeah, so you don't really see all the other stuff that goes with it. You know, so it's like, oh yeah, that picture is the prettiest part of their garden. Yeah, of course it's gonna look good, you know. If they just showed you that much of their garden when everything else is full of weeds, they've taken four four pictures. I think almost every single one of us who has a garden can find four spots in their yard that are Instagram worthy. Sure. But we don't see the four little spots, we see the whole picture, and the whole picture's a mess.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

Oh, exactly. And so it's yeah. So for those that are facing this, that are Full on in that journey, they are in burnout. And maybe they haven't admitted it to themselves yet, but maybe their spouse is going, I can see it. I just, I know they're in burnout. So let's talk a little bit about how to navigate burnout when you're in that journey. Because really, it's not just you individually. You're doing it as a family, you're doing it as a farm team or a farm staff, you're doing it as a community. So there really are practical things to consider, but I want to mainly focus on like what are some general things that we can do to help us in that journey? Because the nuances are going to change. So we're not going to talk about get a plan for your chickens, get a plan for how you're going to water the horses every day. Not going to talk about that. Those are all doable. Let's talk about some general things of like, how do we how do we manage this? What do we do once we go crap? I'm I'm burned out. So what what do you think is like kind of number one on your list of like, okay, how do I start this?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

I think trying to find find ways that you can either limit the work as much as possible, or if you can cut it all all together, depending on what that is. Um, kind of minimizing the workloads. Yep. Um, so if you have birds, for example, um, kind of think of like, okay, are they there as for eggs and that sort of thing, or are they pets? If they're pets, obviously you want to keep them. Yeah. Um, but if you're there just for the meat, just for the eggs, maybe think, okay, do I want a year or two off where I just don't take care of the chickens? Because removing animals from your life, that takes in that takes out so much work. And you don't want to get rid of the, you know, don't get rid of your dogs, your cats. I'm not saying that. Yeah, you know, have some responsibility for them. Yeah. But if it's something that you're raising for meat, anyways, maybe like, okay, well, these are about the maturity age. Let's harvest them for me or donate them to somebody who, you know, wants them for that purpose too. Yep. Um, some people are just getting into chickens, and sometimes it's nice to start with egg layers. Yeah. Um, you know, find somebody who'll take them.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

If you think about just chickens in general, those are three to five times a day. You're having to check on them. You can't be gone after dark. You've got to be back at sunset to put the birds in. You're always thinking about chickens, and the cost is a lot. Yep. And it's hard to say goodbye to them, but sometimes we need to say goodbye for a year or two or three to step back and go, okay, okay, I need I need the perspective. I need to free up my life. And chickens are great, but they are golden handcuffs. Like they're gold, they're wonderful. I love me some chickens, but they're handcuffs. They do require time, energy, people, and interactions. So it's like sometimes putting it on ice means pretty pressing pause. Sometimes putting a farm on ice means I need to find my chickens a new home for a while. And that's okay. Like that's actually the right thing. Your chickens are not the priority. Your family is the priority. And the house is the priority. God is your priority, you know.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

And the amount of um time and just kind of relief you'll find in not having that, you know, constant um responsibility. You can you it'll take a little bit of time or money off the budget. Maybe you can spend that on yourself, get that extra, you know, massage or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

Chicken feed's $37 a bag right now for the good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

So it's like a couple weeks of chicken feed, and boom, you got yourself a massage right there. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Oh my gosh. You really not a very good massage for $37. It's a couple weeks. It's been a couple weeks. I'm not in Thailand right now. They have good massages for like $37. But yeah. But I think sometimes putting it on ice, like you're saying, is get rid of birds. Sometimes it's minimizing the process a little bit and going, hey, this is a needless system I don't need. So it might be like with raised beds and just going, hey, I need to just throw a cover crop in my raised beds for a year or wildflower seed and just let it go. Yeah, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Something that you're not gonna have to take care of. If it's something that you just want a quick break, then you can put in like a perennial or something that's like two or three years for its growing cycle rather than every couple months. Yeah. If it's something that you're like, oh no, I don't want to grow stuff for a good while, hard reset, um, think about yeah, putting a cover crop in there and then maybe covering it up with a tarp or something, kind of let it rest. That's part of that cycle of resting your soil. Ideally, you'd have a cover crop in there just to keep the bacteria and bacteria and stuff up. But if you're wanting to go full on, you know, or something that you know you harvest once a year, sweet potatoes, you just throw a bunch of sweet potatoes and walk away and you're done.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

What was the phrase you used earlier? We're talking about raised beds. Uh, I think it was before we started filming, and we're talking about minimizing needless systems at raised beds, and you said something else about the systems. I can't remember the phrase. Converting the systems is what you said. How to convert a system? Talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Well, yeah, you just you're focused if your focus is on annuals, you're constantly thinking, oh, I need I have to get these seedlings in the ground in two days, and I have geese in three weeks, and just converting those annual systems or converting those chicken coops, or you know, finding a purpose that maybe still aligns with your overall path that you still want to do, um, but allowing it to benefit while you're resting and let it rest too. If you have a chicken coop that you don't let them free range, well, eventually there's gonna be too much bacteria and it'll be harmful for your chickens if you leave them too long. Yeah. So plant a cover crop, plant some beans, some happy hen mix, and just let the weeds take over your chicken coop. Yeah. And then in two or three years, if you want to do chickens again, you put them in and now they have plenty to eat. You know, there's a benefit to them there. 100%. I even think like shade trees over your chicken coop. You know, there's there's ways that you can really benefit it. Benefit the raised beds, benefit your system, benefit you by just converting that into from a frequent short-term reward into a slow long-term reward.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Totally. I think for me personally, looking at weeds in the food forest is hard. It just triggers me when things are not mulched. I love mulch and I love it to look pristine, but there's some seasons of life where I'm like, I just can't mulch right now. I just can't do wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow every day after every day. And so probably the appropriate response is I'm gonna cover crop my food forest for a year and let the weeds and the wildflowers all grow up together. And then in a year or two, I'll come back in and I'll weed whack it down. I'll put down some, you know, contractor paper and I'll mulch it all over again. I'll put the chickens in. It's gonna be fine. It may not look like perfect mulch, you know, for a year or two while I'm resting, but it's gonna do its job. If I can I love that phrase used, converting the system to something else. So going, you know what? I can't mulch. Here's what I can do: I can spread seed and I can walk away and just let nature, you know, take its course. I would say the third thing that comes to my mind, you know, we talk about stabilizing, putting it on ice, converting the systems for me would be focusing on relationships and people. Um, because that's the first thing to go for me when I'm busy is I don't see people talk to people, I don't do anything with humans at all. I don't call people the way that I should. I just go off grid. And so refocusing my energy on I need to ask for help from family or from friends. I need to prioritize those relationships. For some people, it's their marriage of going, I need to focus on my marriage for a season, not on the farm, not on the cows or the horses. I need to focus on my marriage. And so I think for me, that number three is like re-prioritize people. People in family are that's why we food forest anyway, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:23

You know, to feed them. Yeah, why do you do anything? It's to to benefit you, to benefit others. And if you're not doing either of those two things, I mean, yeah, why are you doing it?

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Really?

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Um it is about family. When I remember when I was a CEO of the event space, is the phrase that we would often use is family comes before function, is that sure, this space does need to be functional, but it needs to provide a landing place for community, for our neighbors, for the other businesses, for the church family that was in the building, like really being able to prioritize humans and family above the farm and the homestead and the function of it that way.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

And I think with farms, that's the first thing to go to. Yeah, I think too many farmers get caught up with their farm, you know, not working or functioning or making money. And it it's hard because at least here in the States, and I know other countries overseas, farms are at this point practically hated. Everybody likes the idea of a farm, but nobody actually likes the idea of supporting farms. Yeah. Um and so yeah, it's hard, but then you you kind of realize like, well, the whole point of having a farm is to benefit your family. Yeah. Um, indirectly or directly. Um, even if you're community focused, I mean at the end of the day, like you it doesn't matter why you're helping the community, it still helps you. Now, nobody should look at it for that reason. But at the end of the day, you're helping your community, they help you. That's what that's what it's all about. But if you prioritize the functioning of your system over the functioning of your family, you know. And I think that there's no there's no point.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

The functioning of that system can actually help protect our family too. And I think that's another strategy. So we'll say that's strategy number four is like protecting your family and the time. So protecting our space, we're looking at the perimeters. We're looking at do we have good fences, you know, to give our family privacy, but also are we protecting the boundaries of our family and our time? So when somebody gets home from work, we don't want to be jumping in right at that moment to farm chores when that should be family time. How is your day? Hey, let's sit down and have a glass of iced tea together, you know, and prioritizing those things by assessing the perimeters of our family as does our farm and our family have good boundaries where we respect the physical boundaries, but we also have boundaries of time and space and attention and you know, those boundaries really matter, you know.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Whether it's a specific time of the day, whether it's a whole day, um, whether it's, you know, you need a week, you know, pick that time where it's like, nope, we're not, unless it's an absolute emergency, no farm stuff today. Yeah. This is a family day, not a farm day. Whether that's taking the family out to Disney or you know, uh going to the movies, or even just staying at the staying at the house, but just not doing farm stuff. Yeah, that's it. Completely disconnect from it. And and yeah, and you can still keep refocusing your vision. Um, I like to go to um, you know, my reason for liking Disney is because they have really cool uh, you know, plant uh plant planting things out, you know. Oh wait, demonstration gardens. Demonstration gardens. Uh Lou Gardens is a beautiful place to go. So you can still kind of refocus that vision, but still kind of pulling back as that that's a family time. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

And I think that helps us rediscover the joy and the wonder of the food forest. And it gives us that joy of life and joy of connectivity and being um integrated in a community. It helps us rediscover those things a little bit and reconnect to it. And I'm thinking of a friend of mine who um owns a nursery business. And a few years back they decided, hey, we're gonna take every, we'll just say Tuesday, we're gonna take every Tuesday and we're gonna spend it together, husband and wife. And that's just our day. We're gonna go play, we're gonna canoe, we're gonna have fun, we're gonna go visit a greenhouse. And they rediscovered joy and wonder, and their marriage is thriving because of it. Like the beauty that that creates relationally and in the home is what saved them, I think, from burnout, you know, and what got them through that season. And there's so many ways, I mean, to rediscover that joy. So for some, it's gonna be reading a book. For some, it's going to Disney to the or to the Harry P. Lou Gardens. But I think that's huge, is do something fun that's gonna help you rediscover joy. For me, honestly, sometimes it's going and buying a new expensive plant that I have no idea what I'm gonna do with it. And I go home and I plant it immediately. And even if it's in the wrong spot, I'm like, I just need to do something that's a win that's gonna bring me joy. And I can go replant it later. I can figure it out. But sometimes me doing something when I don't feel like I should be doing it does help me a little. One of the things that I started doing in Kansas City is when I was going through really tough times, I had this dream once. And in the dream, I was reminded of that scripture of, you know, that the Lord cares for the sparrows. How much more will I care for you? And so when I was at this time, I was a missionary. And then the dream that God provided for me when I fed the birds. I spent my last five dollars on birdseed. And so even now in my adult life, if I'm going through a challenging time, not that I have like $5 in my bank account, but it's like I have $15 in my bank account now. I'm doing way better as an adult. You know, so it's like I'll still go, you know what? I'm gonna go spend it on birdseed because it's what brings me joy. And so literally, if I have a tough week, I'll probably go to Wild Birds Unlimited and buy a bag of birdseed because it brings me joy, it brings me wonder, and it re-sparks that connection to nature in my garden in the food forest in my own weird way. You know what I mean? So, what other strategies have you found helpful for burnout? Because you've navigated the burnout season in and out before. I mean, we all have. So what are the ones that you've done?

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Evan Ebb and flows just like the weather, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for me, it's uh the yeah, a lot of it can be weather related. Um, sometimes, you know, it's like like you said earlier, you know, not that shared vision. Um, sometimes it's really hard when if you're not on the same page. Yeah. Um, even if it's even if like on paper you all want the same things. Um, everybody has a different way of doing it. Oh, if you don't have that that shared vision, it can be very, very difficult.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Yep. Oh, totally. Um, and I keep going back to your imaginary day of I've got three days off, you know, and the first thing that you said was, I'm resting. Like I'm actually gonna sleep in. I'm gonna sleep in for an hour. I said four, you know, and it's like sometimes we forget resting just helps, like it does help to sleep in. And you think about adults, like some adults are getting four or five, six hours a night. That is not enough. Like humans, it is proven again and again and again. We need to sleep. We need to sleep in darkness without blue lights, you know, and all that crazy stuff. We need actual circadian rhythms. And a lot of people can't even fall asleep, they're just they're struggling to sleep. It's like they've forgotten how to rest. It's like my my magic cure for sleep is take three magnesium pills. And I use the like Wild Foods Co. I don't get any kickback from them. I wish I'd be like, not sponsored, not sponsored, not sponsored at all. But I do three of those. It's like a multi-source magnesium, has like four or seven different, seven different types of magnesium in it. And man, I take two or three of those and I sleep like a child, like straight up sleep. But it's amazing how good you feel when you rest and you go take a nap in the dang hammock, you know.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

And in a lot of cases, like if for me, um, the big kicker is knowing that I don't have to be up. And I tell myself, I'm not gonna wake up early tomorrow. I don't because I'm not thinking, oh, I need to get up early, I need to get do this, I need to do that, or oh, I have to go here. If you just like know that you don't have to wake up, sometimes you just sleep better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

And that relates back to what you said before about get the importance of getting perspective. And when you have that good perspective, then you can look at it, the farm, you can look at your garden, your food forests, and go, I don't have to do that right now. I don't have to accomplish everything on Chris Edler's to-do list every month. I can do one thing, and that is still a win. It's a freaking win to do one thing on the list. And if that one thing is rest and take care of the gardener, your garden's gonna be okay. Like it really, really is gonna survive. Like, so I don't know. For me, this was really helpful to talk about this this way because it's it's something that we all struggle with. We're going to be on that journey and that that path of burnout occasionally. Um, but I would say when people are on that journey and kind of nearing the end and they're thinking, I want to jump back in. Something that I would really say from personal experience is not to jump back in too fast and ease back in really slowly. I make that mistake a lot as I jump in and go, I'm going full bore, I'm doing 111%, not what you need to do after burnout, because you're gonna end up right back in the hospital, you know, again. And so I'm saying that as we kind of near the end of this because I'm really saying it to myself. And and that's important for all of us to know ourselves, know what we need, what our family needs, what our farm needs, so we know how to usher them into a season of rest, you know. Yeah. Well, this was fun. My matcha is officially um gone. There's a little bit left in the bottom, it's a little bit cold. So hopefully this was helpful to you guys uh in your journey, on your uh path with your farm and your family and all your feathered and furry animals. So take a minute, do all the social media things, uh, and hopefully you'll be able to find your boy back, uh, listen to some of the podcasts that you've missed and join us in for the next one. We'll see you guys soon.