This Prepared Life
Welcome to This Prepared Life, a podcast for women where preparedness feels peaceful, practical, and possible. Hosted by Allison Michael, this show is about creating a calmer, more resilient life through everyday preparedness and intentional living. Inside the episodes, you’ll find realistic food storage tips, Allison’s Three Layer Food Storage system, preparedness skills, homemaking rhythms, and encouragement to help you care for yourself and your family with more confidence and less overwhelm. From emergency preparedness and food preservation to homemaking and building a well-stocked pantry, this podcast offers practical guidance to help preparedness feel more natural in your everyday life. Whether you’re filling your first pantry shelf or have been preparing for years, you can expect simple action steps, honest conversations, and a reminder that preparedness does not have to come from fear. Here, we believe in being prepared, not scared — one pantry shelf, skill, and intentional step at a time.
This Prepared Life
Homesteading and Preparedness with Guest Jen Serenity Hill Farmstead - Ep23
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Homesteading and preparedness when you don't live on your farm. Today's guest is Jen from Serenity Hill Farmstead. Jen is a mom to four living in Illinois. Join us today as we talk about her life homeschooling four children, homesteading when you don't live at your homestead, their shed-to-house conversion, living with an autoimmune disease, and so much more. This episode is packed full and not one to miss.
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Hi, welcome to this prepared life. Thanks so much for listening today. I define preparedness as planning for the things to come. And I believe that everyone should be prepared in whatever way makes sense for your family. And I hope that through this podcast you can learn and grow in your journey, that the information and stories shared provide encouragement and inspiration. So today I am so excited to have another guest for you on the show. Her name is Jen. She is a mom at a four. She lives in Northwest Illinois. She has been prepping and homesteading for about 10 years now, I think. She is a former paramedic, a soap maker, and she is a wealth of information. And I cannot wait for you to meet her. Welcome, Jen.
SPEAKER_00Hi, thanks so much for having me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm so glad you are here. Why don't you start by just telling us, you know, a little bit about you? Who is Jen? Tell us about your family.
SPEAKER_00Well, like you said, I'm a mom to four. Uh we homeschool. We've been homeschooling. This is our 11th year homeschooling. Uh my kids range from my oldest is 16, and then we have an 11-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a seven-year-old. She's our only girl. So we actually started by homesteading in about 2011, I think it was. We had uh just had uh our third child, and they were 13 months apart between our second and our third. So it was crazy busy. And my husband had a job that had him leaving the house early and not coming home until well after everybody was in bed. And during that time, we had our oldest son got really, really sick and was missing more school than he was attending. So, and we live in the middle of nowhere. So the closest specialist or, you know, decent doctor of pediatrician was about two and a half hours away. So it was a lot, a lot of stuff was kind of on me to go through. And then uh the other two ended up needing speech therapy and then developmental and occupational and physical therapy. So it was a lot, and then his income got cut in half, and then it got cut in half again. Um, so we had to get really creative with paying our bills or deciding which bills weren't gonna get paid and providing food. So we started gardening. I had no experience gardening before. I didn't grow up in a gardening family or a homesteading family. Um, my um my parents split when I was really young. My dad was a hunter and um I would call him kind of a light prepper, but not he wasn't, he didn't have food storage and stuff. Um, he relied more on his skills. And my mom um grew up in the city and was he, she's just, you know, reliant on um, you know, stores and things like that, and didn't has never really been super concerned beyond, you know, her just her weekly norm with being prepared. So when this happened, I was kind of scrambling and trying to figure out well, what are we gonna do here? So it was a lot of research and um talking to some local people because now living rurally, there were a lot of people that had gardens. So I just asked people and I learned. And at that point in time, I was already doing soap. I was doing, I was making soap. I started doing that because our middle son had really severe eczema. So I started doing ended up turning into craft shows and selling it and making it on a larger scale. And I met somebody through a craft show that knew how to can. So she became a really good friend and taught me a lot about canning, and it just kind of grew from there. Um, and now we have our backyard homestead, which we will be selling this year and moving to our 10-acre farm. And we have our chickens out there, we hunt out there, we've been hunting out there, and we have our bees out there, and we're excited to add a lot more this year.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. So, that is something that is very unique to your journey in that you do not live on your homestead. Can you tell us a little bit about like how that started and what does your day-to-day look like not being there? You have animals to care for, gardens to care for.
SPEAKER_00It is definitely um time consuming. That's probably the only downside, I would say, is it's time consuming. Our farm is 10 miles away from us. In in summer, it's no big deal. You know, we we have automated systems, we've got, you know, automated watering systems. I do want to add that we don't have electricity or a well. So we rely on rainwater catchment um off of a shed that we built, and uh, we haul water from um our our house in town here. So usually it looks like we get up in the morning, we do the chores at home, and then uh we head out there, do what we need to do. Sometimes we'll bring school with us if I have other things I need to do there. Like right now, I'm working on building a greenhouse. So we'll bring school out there and they'll work on some things and then they'll help me with some things and they'll play and it works out. Kids love being outside and they're very involved in everything we do. So I don't really too much have to worry about we're bored, we want to go. They're involved with everything and they love the animals. But the winter is challenging because we, like I said, live in the middle of nowhere and they plow when they when it's done snowing and when they get around to it. And the road, the last like five miles of that journey, um, is usually uh not plowed or it's just got a thick layer of ice because it's gravel. So it's a challenge, and then there are some times when we can't get out there. Um, but because of our automated systems, they are fine if we can't get there for a day. Beyond that, stuff is frozen and we have to get there. And so far, we've been fine. Everything's worked out. Yeah, it's a lot of work in the winter.
SPEAKER_01It sounds like it. So you mentioned uh just a few minutes ago that you are planning on selling your house in town this year. I think you said this year. Um, what is that gonna look like? Tell us about. I mean, you don't have electricity, you don't have water, you just said you have four children.
SPEAKER_00Well, we bought um, we're gonna do a shed-to-house conversion. So, you know, those pre-built cabins that you see, you can see them, at least rurally, you can see them like in uh big parking lots and things. They'll have those. So I was driving through one of our towns nearby one day and I saw this cabin and we looked at, we went and looked at it and uh we said, you know, this this could this could work. It's kind of small, but you know, it's a 14 by 28. And we're like, how are we gonna fit all these people in there? And it's not a super high loft because you see people doing these shed to house conversions, they've got these awesome high lofts that you know an adult can stand in. This is not that. So it's 14 by 28 uh with the loft that is a 14 by 14, and that's where all three of our boys are gonna be, which is about the same size that they share now in our normal 1750 square feet house. And then there's a second loft over the porch that our daughter's gonna be in, and that's like a four by 12. And then we're actually gonna build on an extra addition that is going to be um a master and a bathroom and um like a family closet. So I have everything. We've got YouTube videos on it, and uh on Instagram I share a lot of it also, but it's it's kind of evolving. Every time we come to a new project, a new step in it, we change our minds. So we'll see what we actually end up doing. We have a pretty solid plan right now where we both finally agree on virtually everything. I say virtually everything, but it's been kind of back and forth with the county, what we could do and what we can't do, and what was required. And if you're gonna do this shed to house conversion thing, I can't say enough. You have to be very clear with the county before you go ahead and do this. And we got we really lucked out in that the things that were given to us, the information that was given to us at the beginning wasn't totally accurate. It was kind of a gray area, so they're letting us do everything that we want to do. So we're lucky with that. We right now have solar. We set up, built our own solar system that works for our needs now, pretty much for charging tools, for keeping water warm. We've got like a water trough just going off of our rain catchment system and for basic things, but for running an entire house, we need a bigger setup for that. And because we're gonna have one of the greenhouses is gonna be heated and some other things that we just have to have electricity for, we are going to hook up to electric at some point when that time comes. I don't know. The well is gonna be a huge expense. It's about $20,000 around here to get a well dug for as deep as the wells are around here. And that's it, that's been our biggest challenge. So now that we have everything lined up, we will have a well. So we will have running water and we will have electricity of some form. And um, as far as septic goes, we're I think we're just gonna do a composting toilet for now. And then later on, when we have our permanent house built, which who knows when that'll be, we may love tiny living and just decide, let's just stay in this. So we'll see what happens.
SPEAKER_01How are you preparing for that? Preparing yourself, preparing your house, preparing your children to go from 1700 square feet to a tiny living.
SPEAKER_00Well, I have a friend who has many more children than me, and she did this with them. So I'm listening to all of her wisdom in this, and she said she stressed more than anything. Start now. She started when they were a year out from doing it so that it wasn't as challenging to make that transition. So that's what I did. Every single week the kids go through stuff and they make decisions on what they want to keep and what they don't. We are gonna have some secondary storage, um, but it's not gonna be for housing stuff that we might use down the road. It's gonna be for essentials. They'll rotate out toys, um, we'll rotate out seasonal clothes, but that storage unit is gonna be it's gonna be here. We're just gonna build it. Uh, and it's it's just gonna be for essentials, but we're doing it little bits at a time so it's not so traumatic.
SPEAKER_01I would love to hear more about prepping and your journey to that. Was there a like a defining moment that moved you into prepping?
SPEAKER_00Yes. That was about when my husband hit got had his income cut in half. That was a time where we were, you know, we had young kids that our oldest was sick a lot and was missing a lot of school. And then our other two that were 13 months apart, they needed multiple therapies. I was driving all over the state to try and get everybody to the specialist because, you know, with rural medicine, you know, there aren't really the specialists that you need, so you have to travel for them. So I was all over the place. And then his income cut in half during that time, and then it got cut in half again. And during that time, uh, we had to kind of figure out how we were going to deal with paying for all of the medical stuff plus the travel, plus the cost of food. Now we don't have this income, so how are we gonna pay the bills and we have to eat? So I didn't know how to garden, uh, didn't know how to can and I found people around. Um, I was doing soap at that point in time. I was selling it and doing craft shows. So a friend of mine that I met through craft show taught me how to can. And we started a small garden and it just kind of built from there. And then when it came to prepping, um, I also had a friend that was an extreme couponer. So she taught me how to coupon and taught me how to how to stock things up. And I learned a lot from between those two people. I learned a ton. And then I just kind of built from there. And then in 2020, or no, I'm sorry, was it 2020? I think yes, I actually think it was 2020. Uh, the Derecho that went that hit Iowa and Illinois, and I think it hit part of Indiana too, that knocked our power out for several days. So that was like a real test on our preps to see what had like where our holes were, what we had prepped enough for, and what we really needed to work on. So, really recently, I've been really putting a lot of effort and focused into what more intentional prepping. But we've always kind of done it since we had that income. We had times as the income started to come back over the years. We slowly built things up and it's really saved us during times of like I have a pretty severe autoimmune disease. And when I flare, I can be, I could be down for a couple of days or a couple of weeks or a month or more. And that has really having those preps has really helped us get through that hard time and not have to worry about my husband having to run to the store and having to scramble for what to feed people and still having healthy foods to give everybody.
SPEAKER_01I had a really interesting conversation with someone else the other day, and um we were just talking about homesteading, prepping, and then homestead prepping. Like and everyone kind of has slightly different definitions of what those things mean. How do you define prepping in your house?
SPEAKER_00I don't know if we have like a set definition of prepping. It's more just kind of a way of life for us. I think for me, homesteading and prepping is synonymous. Um, you know, our skills is what is what we really focus on because you can you can buy all of these, all of these preps and have all of these things that are store bought, but at some point in time, in an extreme kind of situation, those are gonna be gone. And if those things are gone, then what are you gonna do? You have to have skills. So really we started with our skills and we started building with our building our skills and passing those skills on to our children, which is a huge part of our homeschooling. But prepping for us is really just something that we practice in our day-to-day. It's not really extra thing that we do. I don't know if that makes sense. It's more of a way of life, I guess, for us with homesteading.
SPEAKER_01It yeah, it totally makes sense to me anyway. Um, I don't know if you have like a specific system or if you just are just kind of doing what you do. Um, do you have any kind of system that you use for your food storage?
SPEAKER_00Uh, kind of. We have, I know you guys have like multiple layers. I know in the women who prep community, you guys do such a great job of having all these layers. And I look at it and I'm like, oh my gosh, to be that organized. Amazing. And I don't know how I'm gonna do that in a tiny house. We we have we have talks about a root cellar, and because we live in Tornado Alley, we have to have some kind of storm protection. So we're talking about trying to figure out how to build something that serves both purposes. Um, and that would help with the organization too. But for now, I've got this huge country kitchen and there's lots of places to store things. And I kind of have like my immediate, I guess it would be like short-term layer, and I have, I think you call it a working layer. No, or is it a working layer first and then your short-term layer?
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Yeah, some people call it a working layer. I just call it my kitchen pantry.
SPEAKER_00Okay, yeah. So I have like a kitchen pantry and then I've got, I guess, my longer term. Uh, I'm just now starting to do like really long term, like the Mylar and all of that. So we're just starting to get into that. Uh, but I don't really have an organized system of when I come out. I kind of just shop from what I have and I keep a list. Like when I'm starting to get low, I kind of go by that one is none and two is one kind of idea. Uh, so when I get down to just having one, I need to buy at least one more. I mean, I aim for two, and I just kind of rotate through that.
SPEAKER_01You talked a little bit about skills a couple minutes ago. What do you feel are like some of the most important skills for women to learn? That's a really good question.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I could talk about that for so long. And it's really hard to narrow down.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00Um you have to.
SPEAKER_01You have to pick something.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Something, one thing. Um, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_01Or multiple. I don't care. Whatever.
SPEAKER_00In general, from a homesteader or from a prepping standpoint, or either. I'm not picky. Okay. Whatever. Okay. What are just do you think these are important? Cooking. Definitely cooking. And I hate cooking. I don't, okay. I don't hate cooking, but it just it takes so much time. And I between the cooking and the cleaning and everything and having like everything organized, it's it's that part is really hard for me. Like taking the ingredients and making them into actual meals. I have to be super organized for that. And that's not the easiest thing for me. So I would say like just cooking enough from scratch so that it is more of a second nature kind of a thing, and you just know how to look at ingredients. I wish I could do that. Like look at ingredients and be like, this is the meal. Just grab here's a here's a vegetable, here's uh a meat, just take your ingredients and make something. Um, so that's something that I I constantly am working at because, like I said, I didn't grow up learning how to cook from scratch. But I think with homesteading, that is super important to know how to use every part of what you grow or what you raise or what you hunt so that things are not wasted. And that's something that as we do more of this, I learn more and we experiment more. And everything that we learn, whether it is a success or a failure, we teach our children. So I think that's really important, not just learning the skills as a woman, um, as a woman homesteading and having a family, that you're you're learning this and you're letting your kids see you learn this, fail at it, and and teach them so that they can learn this. I I wish I had learned a lot of these skills growing up. So being able to, I guess, cook and to teach and not being afraid to fail at it.
SPEAKER_01I think that is so important, the not being afraid to fail because we all fail. It's how we learn.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I think so often, you know, I mean, you and I, we found each other on Instagram, and Instagram is just this big space full of pretty boxes, full of pretty pictures, and everything looks picture perfect. And um it's so not true. Like that beautiful loaf of bread you're seeing a picture of took years and years for someone to get there, and they made a lot of mistakes and failures in the process. And I think we don't see that. And I think as women, we we compare ourselves to those beautiful little boxes, and um, we don't speak enough that failure has to happen, it just has to.
SPEAKER_00Yes. So my favorite saying, I think I have no idea who said it, I have no idea where I saw it or heard it from, but falling on your face is still moving forward. I love that. I have it written down in a dozen places. Anytime I see somebody fail at someone and beat themselves up at it, I say that look, falling on your on your face is still moving forward, and we learn more from failing than we do from succeeding.
SPEAKER_01I would love to hear a little bit about, you know, you talked about you started prepping when your husband's income got cut, and a lot of people who are just now kind of jumping into prepping are really all of us are on a budget, but a lot of people are like, I really don't have a ton of money to invest in this. Do you have any frugal prepping tips?
SPEAKER_00Uh buy cheap. Don't worry, just just get what's there. I mean, in our situation now, we've got some uh medical stuff where we have to be more mindful of what we buy. But if you're talking about we just have to be able to eat, just just get the the 25 cent bag of rice versus that um the jasmine rice that costs five dollars. At that point, rice is rice, just get it. Don't be picky if you're if you're talking about struggling to have enough to to start prepping to to eat, just get what's there. When it comes to like now, we are more mindful of our of what types of foods we're putting into our bodies, like I said, because of our medical stuff. I had to start more way slower with that. And I don't stock as much now as I did back then when I could just get whatever. And I have to be patient with that. I have to be patient with okay, I can only get one case of the um organic pasta thing of something. I I make my own pasta sauce, but if I'm getting one box of the organic pasta sauce from Costco versus getting three of them, and you know, you just have to work with your budget.
SPEAKER_01You mentioned a couple times your autoimmune disease and just how that impacts you. How is that impacting how you're planning your future homestead?
SPEAKER_00That is a really good question that I could talk forever about. Um, our homestead is actually on a hill. I have a disease, which is this the hill is a is a big thing to consider here. I have an autoimmune disease called ankylosing spondylitis. So it is a disease that originates in the SI joints, which is the joints that basically attach your spine, your spinal column to your hips. And it's inflammatory, meaning swelling, and it goes through your whole body. So it affects my hips, my whole pelvis, uh, up my spine, my shoulders, my entire rib cage. It causes inflammation in my eyes. It has over the last year affected my heart. And then you can get like the more standard hand pain, knee pain, ankle pain, things like that. So long term, everything we're doing, we have to think long term. So this hill, at some point in time, there's a very good chance I'm gonna be in a wheelchair. I'm already using a cane, not all the time, but some days, and I'm officially legally handicapped now. So everything we build has to be wide enough for a wheelchair to get through, has to not be straight in the ground, or at least like right now, we're making the garden. So we're doing garden rows and we're starting from scratch and we don't till, so we're building from the ground. But the long-term plan there is to keep building up, and they will eventually be garden beds so that I don't have to get on the ground when I can't anymore. Um, because I'm not willing to give up gardening and I'm not willing to give up homesteading, so everything has to look different. Our apiary, our bees, I will not give up beekeeping. I love those little things. I was not expecting to love them as much as I do, but beekeeping has been my absolute favorite homesteading endeavor. Um, but we will have to switch the types of hives we hives we use because I won't be able to kind of deadlift a 90 pound frame. Uh, full of honey anymore once it progresses. So I just try and be honest with myself on I'm taking care of myself. I'm working closely with the right medical team and the right doctors. And I, but I still have to be real about it. I still have to be real about the possibilities of it. Some people live a full life, they don't have any kind of long-term mobility issues. Uh, and then other people are completely hunched over and cannot walk without a wheelchair or crutches. So I am preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. And um, we're always talking about when we do something, okay, I can do this now, but will I be able to do this later?
SPEAKER_01So a lot of people will like, and I'm I'm hesitant to say this, but I'm gonna go ahead and um you know, a lot of people will say things like, Oh, well, I can't do that because of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, and I hear you share what you're doing and how passionate and adamant you are when you say things like, I am not giving up my bees and I am not giving up my garden. And um, you know, it just kind of makes me think of, you know, the phrase, well, if if Jen can do this, anyone can. Just with what with what you are facing. So what would you say to the people who are saying, I can't do that because of blah, blah, blah?
SPEAKER_00I think they have a legit concern. Um, I think, like anything, autoimmune or healthy, people have priorities. And if your priority is to have your own homestead, then that's your priority, and you're gonna make that happen no matter what. Now, your homestead might be way smaller. You may not can a thousand jars a year, you may not hunt, you may not process your own animals like we do now. And at some point in time, I may not do that, but I will contribute in different ways, and I won't give up the overall goal and dream of homesteading. But I will say that mentally facing a disease like this is incredibly hard. There are days that I sit and cry and I have to have my pity party, and you have to process every single part of it to be able to have that healthy balance because this is it's just too hard to face. And the idea of one of the major complications with this disease that I'm already starting to have is um I left this part out. This is an important part. Uh, if this goes into your spine, your uh your vertebrae, and around your sternum and your rib cage, and it gets really bad, it can fuse all of your joints together. So you don't you get what's called bamboo spine and your rib cage can't really expand to be able to breathe. You can still breathe, and it's not fatal, but it makes things very, very difficult. And obviously, if you can't breathe, you can't move around and do all those things. So, like mentally, that's really hard to face and to think this could happen to me someday is very, very scary. So if I'm deciding this is too much, I have to have lower expectations of myself, that's okay. That is okay to say, you know what, I can do this for now, but one day when this disease progresses, I know I'm not gonna be able to do this, or I don't want to. I want to put my energy into something else. I think certain people push themselves hard because it's part of their personality and it's part of who they are. And I am definitely one of those people. And I'm also one of the people, one of those types of people that um, if somebody tells me I can't do it, I'm gonna say, watch. You just watch. Even if I'm not that passionate about it, maybe to a fault I do this. I'll just say, Oh, oh yeah? Okay, watch this. Um, but everybody, like I said, everybody has their limits. And I think you have to not compare yourself. Like if you see someone like me that um that is facing something like this and is still doing all of these things, don't think that you are any less just because you don't want to or can't do all that. Everybody is different. And I see people, there are people in the podcasting world, the axial spondylowarthritis podcast. It is a fantastic podcast. And he got me through a lot of really overwhelming, scary times just listening to him. He doesn't homestead, he doesn't have prep, he doesn't do any of those things. He talks and he shares, and that is so helpful and beneficial, and um, I would guess very fulfilling for him. So you just have everybody has their own priorities and um just don't don't think that you're any less for not being able to do something. I love that.
SPEAKER_01And I think that um you are just a wealth of encouragement and inspiration for people. So I just yeah, I love you, Ted. Um okay, so you've kind of mentioned just in you know, different answers, some of the things that you were doing on your homestead and some of the animals that you have. Can you just like tell us? Like, here's this list of you know, we have bees and chickens, and this is what we do.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I love this part. I could talk all day about this. Okay, so we had we hunt. That's how we started with our farm with our acreage. Um, we the only thing we could do, it was in a conservation reservation program when we got it. So all we could do was hunt. And my husband was raised in a hunting family. So he was very familiar with hunting. Um, we learned how to process our own over the years. Now we 100% do everything on our own, and we're using more and more uh every every time we harvest another deer. We just we now we're doing the liver, we're doing the heart, we're doing as much as we can. And then we do chickens. We have done meat chickens in the past. We actually didn't do them on our land, uh, we did them with friends, and we learned a lot from that experience. So we're going to be doing them again this year. We have our regular laying flock, um, and then we have our bees, and then we will, oh, I can't believe I forgot them. Uh, we have rabbits at our backyard homestead. Those actually started uh with our middle two boys. They really wanted rabbits, and we use their poop for as fertilizer for our gardens, which is the best fertilizer ever. And eventually, when we're living out there, then we're talking about what to do next. You know, our kids, they just they love farm life and they love animals. I have one that wants to be a vet and the other one that just can speak to animals. I don't know. It's like the chicken whisperer. Uh, so he wants all of the animals. So we're deciding what to do next because I do make soap and I am expanding every year. Uh, I would really like to get goats and have um dairy goats both for our consumption and for soaping. I would love to do a dairy cow at some point, but I don't know if uh physically for me that is a smart idea. So that's something that we're just planning for. It might happen, it may not happen. But I think that would probably be it for us as of right now. It would be the chickens. We do meat chickens a couple times of year, and then the bees and goats.
SPEAKER_01How long have you been raising your bees?
SPEAKER_00This was my first year. I got them. I did how did you get them? That's okay. Uh no, in 2021, we got bees. I have been learning for a few years, and it was so overwhelming to me, and I was so scared to get stung. And I was just, I waited so long. And then finally I said, you know what? We're doing it. A friend of mine was selling all of her things. They sold everything and got an RV, and they're RVing now, and they had bees, and they said, Hey, you want to buy our bees? We're moving and we can't take them. And so we just did it. We just jumped into it and they gave us an amazing deal. And we learned a lot because they actually absconded for any non-beekeepers. It means they basically didn't like the conditions of their hive, so they left. And we found that out after we got them there. So um, wax moths had moved in and I had a heck of a mess to clean up, but I learned so much. And I got everything ready for the following year, and I ordered a couple nukes and we just started going.
SPEAKER_01I love bees and Joe has bees, and I know nothing about bees, and I just follow him around and I get in the way. And yeah, but I'm always fascinated as I watch people do bee things. So when I saw you doing honey this year on Instagram, I was like, oh, Joe has bees. Yay. I would love to hear um what is something, as you just think back over your 10 years um of homesteading and prepping, what is something that you are just incredibly proud of that you learned or accomplished?
SPEAKER_00Teaching my kids how to do this, putting a passion in them. They will they will jump into anything. Um, my son, my youngest son, Caleb, he is in a B suit every time. There are pictures of him on my Instagram page um holding a B on his finger. His face is in the hive every single time. I have to tell him to back up. He's like, and he observes everything, everything they're doing, and he points things out that I never would have noticed or would have even observed. Uh, same thing with our chickens. He just, that's why I call him the chicken whisperer because he notices things. He'll pick up on behaviors before anything anybody else does. I would never see half the things that he points out. They love to track, they love to hunt, they love to be involved in everything. They stand there and help us butcher the deer. They do everything. And I think part of that is our lifestyle, and part of it is presenting it to them in such a in the right way, like in a positive way, and explaining why we're doing what we're doing, the process of it, why this is important. But I am so proud of how they have just taken this stuff and run with it. I have my oldest, he's 16, and we haven't even moved in the tiny house yet. And he is already talking about his long-term plan of I want to buy acreage, I want to build a tiny house. This is what I want to do. I want this lifestyle. So I'm the most proud of my kids and embracing this. And even if they decide, you know, homesteading isn't for me. They have the skills, and I'm still proud of them for everything that they have done and working together. And anybody who's done any kind of building project or um working with animals knows that it definitely brings out people's colors. So being able to do home improvement projects and building projects and all of that, and not seeing the best side of everybody and still saying, This is awesome. I want to do that, and still being a part of everything, I'm pretty proud of them.
SPEAKER_01Um, what about what was your best failure?
SPEAKER_00My best failure?
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Um, I gotta think about that for a second. I failed it so much. Um, I don't really hesitate, so I really do. I fail a lot. I go, oh, this looks like fun. With the exception of the bees, I did hesitate there. Um, let's just do it. And I don't I don't wait on things. So I do. I tend to fail a lot. I would I'd have to say gardening. I really would. We had one year, I just decided to change gardening methods in the middle of the year. And I created such a mess, everything that I had died. I had such a nothing harvest. Like you probably we could probably ate fresh a couple meals, and that was about it. Yeah, we had blight, we had pests, we had like rot, we had, yeah, everything died. And then I over-treated with like we treat organically if there's, you know, something really needs to be treated. So I sprayed the crap out of um a fruit tree with neem oil and it burned it. Oh no. Every kind of gardening mistake you can make, I think I made that year and I killed like everything. I was so I never wanted to quit gardening. I've never done anything that has failed so bad that I have said, okay, I'm never doing that again. But if anything could be close, that year was it. So I went back next year, but let's just say I'm glad we had a long winter that year because I needed to find some motivation again.
SPEAKER_01You have been doing these just incredibly awesome first aid videos on Instagram. And you are a former paramedic. Can you tell us a little bit about just all of that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, so before I had kids, I was a paramedic in Chicago for, oh, I don't know, more than 10 years uh for a long time. And I worked in uh the private sector and I worked in municipality, uh, which basically means private ambulances and then fire department. And I started seeing other people talking about some first aid stuff and started seeing some in the prepping community, some of the things that people prep. And I thought, do people know how to use these things? Like IVs. I think that's a that's a common thing that um a lot of preppers will store is IV supplies. And I just wonder if people know how to use this stuff. And do they know the proper way to treat burns and the proper way to use a tourniquet? And some of these things that are very common, just the common basic first aid things that people may not know, like ways to prevent an infection when you do have a serious cut or a wound, or how to stop that bleeding if it's a wound, or when to know if you need the hospital or not. So I figured let's just put a series together and we'll just talk about this. And I'm finding that it's hard to not overshare some of the technical, I don't want to start getting into medical jargon and people are like, I can't understand what she's saying. What is she talking about? But I just want to, I'm breaking it down into series. So we have like um yesterday I just did burns. So I don't know how long I'll be doing it for, but we're doing first aid Fridays on Instagram and I'm doing them live, um, 2 p.m. Central Standard Time. And we're yesterday was burns, the date, the week before, I'm not sure what I did. I think it was bleeding. And then kids. I talked about one about how to deal with first aid with kids. So I'm trying to pick a new topic every week. And if anybody has any questions, I open up for questions at the end too, and just try and give thorough but basic information so people are more prepared to deal with emergencies.
SPEAKER_01And it has been so awesome when I saw you start doing these. I got so excited because um first aid is an area where I definitely feel like our preps are lacking. Um, and it's for the exact reason that you just said. I'm like, I am not gonna go buy an IV because I don't know how to use one, or you know, all of these, you need some skills to know how to use some of this equipment, or you can sometimes cause harm. Yes. Um, so I am not even going to think about um stocking items I don't know how to use right now in the medical area. And so when you started doing those videos, I was like, oh, I'm so excited. And listeners, we are recording this. It is currently, what is it, January 22nd, maybe 21st, somewhere in there. It's like mid-January of 2022. So I do not know when Jen's um guest episode will air, but um, you can also, if she is no longer doing First Aid Fridays, she did say that everything will be saved and able to be watched later. So that is just a great resource and incredibly exciting. What do I not know enough about you to ask?
SPEAKER_00Uh, probably the thing I don't talk a lot about. I used to, but um, just for privacy's sake, I stopped. Um and it has nothing to do with homesteading or prepping. But uh all of my kids have special needs, every one of them. So that provides kind of a different uh approach that I have to take to homesteading and to prepping. And we have to be mindful of um with anxieties and understanding of certain things when we're teaching them. We have to take a little bit different of an approach. But I don't talk too much about it because, like I said, um, I mean, I'm open with you know what everybody has and and what our challenges are, but um just I just you know don't want my kids to look back and say, oh, look, all there's all that information out there on the internet about me. So anything that I do share is with their permission. Uh I just it's not something that I really focus on publicly as much anymore.
SPEAKER_01How has that um impacted your prepping, your homesteading?
SPEAKER_00So it has really impacted our medical preps uh a lot because there's medications now that we have to have on stock all the time. So I am focused right now, but specifically on trying to find alternatives. So I have I've always been into um herbalism, but I have really in the last year really learned a lot about them. And I'm stocking up on more, and we are growing more and just doing more with them. Uh so that's been a big thing. What we grow, how we how we are teaching them is another thing with some of the things. Uh, like one of my children has high functioning autism, and you have to be very matter-of-fact with him. It's more black and white, and uh, you have to explain everything. So we can't just kind of like watch this, now do it. You really have to explain everything so that they have a thorough understanding of not just this is this, but this is this, and this is why, and these are the reasons why we do this, and this is what could happen, and this is what does happen. Like it's a lot of explanation.
SPEAKER_01I have so enjoyed hearing everything about your family and your journey and your homestead. And I could talk to you for another 12 hours, I think, but that might make for a pretty long podcast. So um, why don't we end with you sharing where people can find you online, you know, what kind of content you have out there and where?
SPEAKER_00Sure. Uh, we have a website, it's SerenityHillfarmstead.com. I am starting to put more blogs on there, um, but it's more how-to stuff. Uh, so if you want more of the personal daily stuff, that is on Instagram. I'm on Instagram almost daily, either mostly in the stories, but sometimes I do posts and reels and things, all the fun stuff. Um, and then we have a YouTube channel. We've been doing that for a number of years. Sometimes I take some breaks on there, but I pretty consistently post once a week on there. And then you can see the details of like our tiny house and walkthroughs of things and how we do some of the things we do in a little more detail on there too.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you so much for being my guest. Thanks for having me. This was fun. Yeah, it was good to have you. All right, listeners, thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time.