Journey to Self-Sufficiency with Chelsea of Little Mountain Ranch - Ep14

Join me today for another guest episode. This one with Chelsea of Little Mountain Ranch. Today we talked about her journey to self-sufficiency, her family's experience with a 47-day evacuation, and so much more.
Chelsea lives in the mountains of northern BC with her husband and their children. 

Chelsea is a homestead prepper with years of experience in all things, from gardening to animals to food storage. You can find Chelsea at:
https://www.littlemountainranch.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@LittleMountainRanch
https://www.instagram.com/littlemountainranch/

Today we talk about her journey to self-sufficiency, her family's experience with a 47-day evacuation, and so much more. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:30

For every 10 or 20 male perspectives, you might find one female perspective. And I want to change that with this podcast. We relate to others who are similar to ourselves and we can find inspiration in their stories. That is the goal for guest episodes here. To feature women from all walks of life, all ages and stages, women in different geographical locations. I want to normalize women who prep, and I hope that their stories educate, inspire, and encourage you no matter where you're at in your journey. Today we are welcoming Kelsey. Kelsey is a homesteader and prepper who I met on Instagram. She's a mom of many and lives remotely in the mountains of British Columbia, Canada with her husband Dan and nine of their 11 children. They have been homesteading for 20 years and prepping for 10. One of their goals is to get to the point where grocery visits are limited to a few times a year. Welcome, Kelsey. It is so good to have you on the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

I am so grateful that you asked me to be here. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05 1:32

Yeah, why don't you start by just sharing a little bit about yourself and your family? Who is Chelsea?

SPEAKER_03 1:40

That is a big question after 44 years. We live in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, in the mountains, and we have a 160-acre homestead up here. When we originally bought this homestead six years ago, we wanted to produce meat and vegetables for the market. And after about a year or so of doing that, we realized that we were what we were really wanting to do was to be more self-sufficient ourselves. And we have 11 kids. So there's a lot that's involved in that and a large quantity of food that's involved in that. So it wasn't really pr uh practical at that point to be doing goals, to be selling and producing on our own. We do want to do that again eventually in the future, once we get to the point where, like you said, we're going to the grocery store a couple of times a year, which is a pretty ambitious goal, I realize. And then as our family grew, it just became more and more practical for us to have to make fewer trips to the grocery store because it's very expensive. And especially if you do want to eat well or you want to eat organic or anything like that, it becomes pretty cost prohibitive to go to the grocery store. So we just started to produce more and more of our own food. And then um when I I just started to do more research into preparedness, you know, when I would do a search about how to um say dehydrate, preparedness content would come up, and I started to do some research and investigation into that a little bit more what that looked like. And I realized that I had actually always been a prepper. I just didn't know, I didn't call myself that, or didn't realize that there were other people like me out there. Um, that also had a drive to, because it comes from inside of me, to um maybe have a little bit of more control over my life, and that's one way that I can control it is by having lots of food stored, having a sense of security. And then in 2017, we were evacuated from our property for 47 days for forest fire, and that was my first experience ever in natural disaster or any sort of uh event that would require some level of preparedness to be able to do it well. And we didn't actually, we weren't really prepared for that as well as I um had wanted to be. So that's really put the fire under me to to be more um prepared on a broad basis, not just specifically in our property to be able to stay here if something were to happen, but to be able to take my family and be somewhere else if I needed to. And and so it's just kind of snowballed from there, and now I'm I'm fully in it.

SPEAKER_05 5:05

Sounds like it. I have said that before that I was um always a prepper, I just didn't know it. And I was a homesteader before I was a prepper. Um, and that is backwards. Like most preppers are start prepping and then they start homesteading. So I really I relate to that. Can you share a bit about when you where you started in your homesteading? Um, and you shared a little bit about 2017 and how that led to prepping. Um, can you share a little bit about where you started and what that journey looked like?

SPEAKER_03 5:44

Sure. Um, so like I said, my mom always canned in garden. So I grew up doing that. So by the time I was living on my own, you know, at 18 and had my first child and um all of that, I I had those skills in my wheelhouse, which which I'm I'll always be my grateful to my mom for. She also raised me, always reading to me uh historical fiction. So I had this really strong connection to old ways of doing things. I it I was just really attracted to it, and she'd instilled that in me. So when my husband and I bought our first house when I was 21, 22, somewhere in the or my early 20s, um, I put in a garden right away, and I had no idea what I was doing at all. Besides, you know, like I helped my mom, but I had never been part of the planning of how to garden or anything, and I put in a massive garden. And then I also bought 25 chicks, and I and this was prior to where the internet was really a resource, so I was getting books from the library, I didn't have any connection with people who had had chickens before or anything like that, and I um I just jumped right into it, and there were a lot of massive errors along the way. And then when my husband and I were in our late 20s, I I had always known that we wanted to have acreage and we wanted to have a large, uh, a large, or I did anyways, I wouldn't say my husband was 100% on board. Um, so what he said was, hey, why don't we leave a farm and experience it and see if that's something that that we would want to do. And so we did, and we, and it was an off-grid cabin with hand pump water and a wood cook stove for work, the whole thing. And I loved it, and my husband loved it less than I did. He was not as sold on the whole idea as I was I would have bought that property right then and there, and that would have been it for me. Um, but he took a little bit more warming up to the idea, so we ended up buying two and a half acres. That was sort of uh this property that we had leased was 160 acres, so two and a half acres, and we lived there. I got my first milk goats there, um, got into heritage chickens, into raising my own meat birds, uh, all the basic kind of beginner stuff that way. And but I just outgrew it really quickly, and my husband being an absolute gem, um, was like, all right, okay, uh your heart is obviously really into in this, and he he's always been um a supporter of my dream. And so we ended up moving here to this to to this large acreage. And I have to say that since 2017, with the evacuation and all of that that happened um during that time, my husband actually stayed here with our oldest son and protected the property during that period of time. So I had the kids off the property. So he was left with what was here, with what food we had stored, and it gave him a real appreciation for the effort that had been put in to make sure that there was food food here because they weren't allowed to leave the property or anything um like that because it was an evacuation order. He started to really appreciate it, and then with world events over the last couple of years, that uh he's 100% on board now. So that's a very long-winded um response.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

I this is such a topic that was great excited about.

SPEAKER_05 9:15

So can you tell me a little bit more about just that evacuation in 2017? Um, share with us about that experience. Maybe what did you learn and what were you evacuated for?

SPEAKER_03 9:29

Sure. So it was forest fire. Um, it was during the BC 2017 forest fires where we we had fire completely surrounding our ranch, and it wasn't just that it was surrounding our ranch. My sister lived an hour away from us, it was surrounded her property. My mom lived an hour away from there, it surrounded her property. It was basically this entire region of British Columbia was on fire. And um, so when they for the fires first broke out, my family came here because we all thought there's no way, because we're at we're across across the river from where they were. We just thought, well, we'll just be here. There's no way the fires are going to come here. And within about 48 hours they did. And it was the strangest, most surreal experience. If it if it happened again, we're way, way more prepared, which I can talk about that. But then we just we had uh our trailer, we had a heat, we had a big van. We basically loaded everything from our house, it was ridiculous, um, into our van, completely impractical things, like my canning and my just it was it was it was uh it just was um more of a shock than I thought because I had I had read it, we knew we lived in a forest fire zone. I thought we had a pretty good plan in place, but we absolutely didn't. It was pretty chaotic. And um we left with my husband. We didn't understand how evacuation orders worked at that time. Um, so my husband came with us. We set up, we went to a hotel the first two nights, and then we set up at a campground because we have a travel trailer for just um this sort of circumstance so that we would be able to with such a large family, it's pretty impractical to stay in an Airbnb or uh a hotel or anything like that. So we set up at a campground and I stayed there with the kids with my big sacks of beans in my trailer, and oh my goodness, it was ridiculous. Um and then my husband came came back home and he was able to get a pass to come back in with my eldest son, who was an adult, and they stayed here, they built a fire suppression tank, a big huge tank with fire pumps and everything, and they did patrols with the neighbors. We live in a ranch and area, so all of the people around us had been through this before, and so they they kind of set up patrols to check fire lines, um, have set sprinklers up, make sure our hay was cut, all of these different things. But it was 47 days of what I could I consider now in hindsight unnecessary stress because had we had some sort of plan to a place that we could have gone, for instance, maybe accept an eight a small piece of property somewhere, or even a campground that we had had pre-planned that would fit our needs um well, or something like that, it it would have been so much better. And also food that was easy to um transport rather than you know 500 jars of canned vegetables. It was completely impractical. Um, so yeah, so we're in a very different circumstance now, but that was a major, major wake-up call for me. And sort of arrogance I had about my own preparedness.

SPEAKER_05 12:43

What is something that you would share with someone else? Like take me. I live in a fire zone, an area of North Idaho that gets frequent fires. The current valley we live in has not had one in a very long time. So everyone says it's a due. What is something you would share with someone who hasn't had to do that and needs to make some plans?

SPEAKER_03 13:08

Uh well, what we have we have done is um we do have the ability to fight fire here on our property now where we didn't before. So that would be a big one because the something to understand about uh most most farm type properties is that we're not covered by um forest fire management or not forest fire management, but there's not a fire truck that's gonna be coming to our property. So the only way that it's really going to be protected is by ourselves. So I would say making sure that you have some means to defend your own property against fire, understand the laws around you around evacuations and whether or not you can legally stay where you are in most places, at least in um DC, you can. Um the the other thing would be to have some sort of means to uh like a travel trailer, even a tent, some some camping gear that you could have to be able to go um somewhere else because most natural disasters are limited in scope, so it's not something that's going to be necessarily going on for an extended period of time. So so most people could camp for a couple months if they needed to with the right equipment, so having that prepared, and then having some form of either extra money put aside if you need to um be gone from your property, so if you needed to stay in a hotel or you needed to um rent a campsite, like which was in our case, or something like that, make sure that you have money set aside for that, and then the more practical things, which are having food um stored, so a 72-hour bug out bag is always a really good idea, of course. A little bit longer than that, I would say I would go up to two weeks for if you live in an area in which you know um natural disasters could happen, I would bump it out to two weeks to make sure that you have that much food for every member of your family. And um, yeah, so those are all the things that we've implemented.

SPEAKER_05 15:07

Those are great. So one of the most frequently asked questions that I get, and I'm not sure if it's one of your most frequently asked questions, um, but it's food storage. Would you share a little bit about what your food storage looks like for your family, how you organize and rotate, just kind of what is your system?

SPEAKER_03 15:31

Um, well, I have to say I'm one of those people that um doesn't really have a great system in place. So, and and I actually think that can be kind of a relief to some people because if you go online and you search this this kind of stuff, it can be so overwhelming seeing spreadsheets people have and all of these um lists and how many pounds of of rice you need and sugar you need and all this kind of stuff, it can be super overwhelming. Um, so in our case, I just started. I read a post you actually put up, I think it was yesterday, about little by little. It's not that and that it's not that somebody could come to my Instagram channel or my YouTube or anything like that, and they could see everything we have now, which is a solid six-month supply on those things, a year on laps. I have a root cellar, a cold room, you know, 4D freezers and all of this stuff. But this took, like you mentioned at the beginning, 20 years for me to get here to this point. So I I can tell you what we have, but I don't want anybody to be overwhelmed by that because it took a long, long, long time to get here. Um so I have a root cellar. We store 100% of all of our root vegetables. So potatoes, turnips, um, uh what did I just harvest yesterday? Parsnips, those kinds of things, anything that can be stored in a root cellar. I have a our everything we would need, we don't buy things like that anymore, potatoes or anything like that. I have um a big pantry that I store all my canned goods in, and I'm an avid canner. So I um this year I'm just about to a thousand jars of canned um product. And when I say I am, what I'm actually saying is our family is because we all participate in what we do here. It's not like I I might have personally put the products in the jars and stored all those um jars, but my my whole family participated in the growing and the harvesting and the chalking and all of that, and we have a large family, so it doesn't take us um very long to be able to prep, you know, 500 pounds of tomatoes or whatever it is. Um we also raise a hundred percent of our own meat, so we raise chickens, turkeys, pigs, um, cows, all of that, and we do all of that processing ourselves. And um we what else do we do? I don't know. Oh, we have a milk cow. We have when we have a couple milk cows, so we're producing the majority of our own um dairy at this point as well. So um how how I figure out how it is or what it is that we need is mostly just by trial and error, honestly. Um I started buying large bags of beans and I just paid attention to how long a 25-pound bag of um beans would last us. And so it was more through experience, not through so much researching or putting numbers into a uh calculator, a food calculator, or anything like that. And um one of the most important things though that I think I did that made all of this easier is I learned how to cook food from scratch. And I learned how to cook with things like beans and potatoes and rice and things like that, um, because it just made it so much more uh financially doable um and and just less stressful because I can put put up uh you know a couple hundred pounds of beans in my in my pantry, which can last a good long while, and I know how to make a lot of different food uh meals with that stuff. So I hope that answers the question.

SPEAKER_05 19:06

That was great. Um, I absolutely loved what you just said about you know learning how to cook. And I don't know if you've heard me go on one of my tirades and talking about lost skills and oh it's I think so.

SPEAKER_03 19:21

But like don't you think it's so exciting um though watching this movement towards these things? Because it isn't just the crowd anymore that's doing it. I get contacted from from people, young people in their teens, people that are up in their 70s that are learning how to do these things. And I think it's so exciting and it's really empowering. Once you start um learning how to do these things on your own, it's it's very addicting and just very empowering.

SPEAKER_05 19:51

Yes, I totally agree. It is 150% amazing. I feel like there's this awakening happening in a lot of people. Um, and I just absolutely love answering people's questions. And then when they come back and update me, and they're like, I just want my first batch of applesauce. And it's like, I just want to hug you. I am so excited that you did that. You know, you made applesauce. That's great. What I guess I love it.

SPEAKER_03 20:26

Yeah, me too. And what I get a lot of pictures of because I share, I share a lot of gardening content during the summertime. And so I there's been a woman, one woman in particular I'm thinking of, who contacted me a few years ago and just had started asking questions via the comment section of videos and things like that. And now she's been sending me this past summer pictures of her garden. She didn't have a garden or any experience when we first started talking, and she killed it this year. She she did absolutely and she was canning stuff she was producing out of her garden, and it was just so inspiring, and it makes it feel very um worthwhile to share this kind of information because you get to see things like that. It's an honor.

SPEAKER_05 21:09

Yes, it definitely is an honor. I have been talking a lot recently um just about prepping as a lifestyle, and um, I wanted to get your opinion, you know. In my opinion, it's a lifestyle, it's not a do-it-and-forget it. You don't fill your bucket with beans and leave it in your basement for 30 years. Um, how does preparedness play into how you live your life?

SPEAKER_03 21:36

Um, I would, I would my my eldest son, who's just about 25 and I, were talking a couple of days ago. And he he just said, Mom, this is just this has just always been who you are. This this this is a lifestyle, something you love in the same way other people love other things, like someone might might love painting, somebody might love mechanics or something like that. You've just always really loved this. It's a part of who you are. So I would say that for some people it's a lifestyle. This is just my my opinion on that, is that for some people it's a lifestyle. But I would say that for the majority of people, it's it I personally think it's imperative. I think that preparedness is something that can produce such a level of mental security. And especially in the times we're living in right now, I feel like no matter whether you make this your lifestyle or not, it's just it's a practical thing to be doing. And whether or not you have maybe possible job loss, illness, all of these other reasons why being prepared could could ease your suffering in the future. Um, so I think that there's people that make it lifestyle like you and I, who really love what we're doing. And then I think there's other people that might live in an apartment in a city or something like that, and they can start making it their lifestyle as far as paying attention when they go grocery shopping to the things they're buying and buying a little bit of extra each time, especially especially things that are non-perishable, and stocking those up so that they can have a little bit of mental security about under, you know, knowing that they have some of that food there for at least a couple of weeks if they maybe couldn't go to work for a few weeks or something like that. And then for those uh for those that grab a hold of it and go, wow, this feels really good, that's when I think it becomes more of a lifestyle um thing. But I think it could it could be um like overwhelming for somebody if they felt like they had to make this their lifestyle because it it's it's a big thing. I I don't know if it's like this for you, but it it's first thing in my mind in the morning, most of the things that I do throughout the day are connected to it in some kind of way, and I have the privilege of being able to be home doing this full time, so it's just part of what I do. When I go to bed at night, I kind of take inventory of what I did that day. What do I need to do the next day that has to do with harvesting my food, the food or whatever it is? Um, and I just don't think it's like that for everybody.

SPEAKER_05 24:01

So yeah, I think uh like you know, there's prepping and there's homesteading, and then there's homestead prepping.

unknown 24:08

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 24:09

We're like pro prepping houses. Does that mean we're the are we the really crazy ones or not?

SPEAKER_04 24:24

Yeah, I would agree that there is a difference between the two.

SPEAKER_05 24:27

Yeah, yeah. Um, I would love to hear more, and I know it's you know a question a lot of people um will sometimes ask is how to involve your kids. And I know for me, you know, we have gardens, we have animals, that's just kind of what we do. Everyone lives here, so everyone just chores here. Do you have any specific ways that you have prepared children to deal with um emergencies and prepping and yeah, no, it does.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

And I'm just I'm just really thinking about that one because that's something that I've I've spent a lot of time thinking about. Because I think I can be kind of um single-minded about things and really passionate about this topic and very I love following what's happening in the world. Well, I don't love it right now because it can be pretty depressing, but I but it's something that I do a lot of, and so my the what I talk about a lot of the time and the way that I live my life is around that, and that's not always, at least in my experience, been the best thing for my kids to have um kind of like a doom and gloom type uh view of the world, you know what I mean? And so I I have been careful about they understand, they I mean they obviously know we're pretty prepared and they understand why, because when we were evacuated, my kids bring it up all the time because it was a huge uh event in their lives, and now with everything that's happening with the pandemic and all of that, my kids are living through a really unique time in history, so they're they're aware of what's happening and they're aware of why we're doing what we're doing. But I try to find balance between that and that our whole life kind of revolves around this homesteading um thing, and there's a lot of work, excuse me, that's involved in this kind of lifestyle. And um what I would call sort of normal 21st century childhood, because uh we don't live a hundred years ago, and uh I have tried in the past to almost live like that, and my older kids, because because I have three adult children now, um have have given me some feedback on that and and said, you know, in this area, if there's been a little bit more balance in this area, or we've had a little bit more access to, you know, pop, pop music, pop television, whatever it happens to be, these things, um, it would have it it would have had a little bit more balance. So I actually make a lot of effort to try to have a balance with that. My kids all are very, very skilled. They can all, we're actually butchering all of our chickens in the next couple of days, and all of my kids participate in that. Um, we they all participate in daily farm chores, they all participate in canning. Most of my kids who are 12 and older can can um food and know how to do it and are they know how to dehydrate, they know how to store food in root cellars, all of these kind of really cool old skills. But they're all they're not necessarily they're cool to me, but they're not necessarily cool to them or they're friends. So I I really try hard to um balance, like we have an Xbox in the house, and the kids will negotiate extra chores to play extra time on, you know, the Xbox and things like that. And um I just yeah, I think there's a balance in there somewhere that I'm hoping I'm finding now that I haven't been so great on in the past.

SPEAKER_05 27:53

I love that your adult children were able to share that with you. I think that is it's just valuable to, and most people don't, you know, get that opportunity to hear a perspective, but still have young enough children to implement some changes.

SPEAKER_03 28:12

I know. I I've been thinking a lot about that actually, because my oldest is 25 and my youngest is six. So I I do feel like I've I've joked about this with my husband in the last couple of weeks, but it's like we're getting a second chance to do what to do with it. Not that we did a bad job the first time around, but but you know, to make some improvements.

SPEAKER_05 28:33

So that six-year-old then as an adult will be like, Mom, I wish you would have done it the other way.

SPEAKER_04 28:40

Yeah, exactly. That's right, that's right, totally.

SPEAKER_03 28:42

So there is there is a balance in it. But they are. I mean, my kids are are super skilled in a lot in a lot of ways and are are aware of the state of things. And I kind of hope that what I give them is actually hope for the future, not the opposite. Like I I've tried to to be very selective about the level of things that I share with them or talk to them. I'll talk to friends about that, or my husband, or whatever, about the newest thing that's happening in the world or whatever, and try to instill in them more that this is empowering for their future. Like dad and I are working really hard to create a place or a space that they'll be able to have or will we'll be producing food on this property for the family, whether we have kids living here or not, things like that, and turn it into a positive instead of that it's based on fear or um or impending doom or anything like that, which I think can happen in this in this um in the prepper movement.

SPEAKER_05 29:38

Yeah, I always um try and speak to that. You know, there's a hashtag prepared, not scared. Um what would you, as someone who has been doing this for a very long time, um, say to a brand new prepper that is just starting out?

SPEAKER_03 29:58

Oh, that's such a hard question. When I get that question specifically from a person, uh I try to ask their situation because it's such a hard question to answer as a way, like as a blanket like this would apply to everybody kind of thing. I would say not to get overwhelmed. Follow people like you who are sharing that kind of message. Like, don't get get overwhelmed, start small, start where you are, grow where you're planted. Don't um look, you know, you can look to look at people like us who have been doing this for a long time to get inspiration and to learn for sure, but don't um compare yourself to that at the beginning. And also to just start small, even if it's on the homesteading side of things. Don't be like me and go buy 25 chickens, you know, to start, buy five. Learn how to do it so that you can be successful, so that you can um avoid some of the failures that people like me have made. And um and pay really close attention to what it is that you because food is a big thing, like you were just mentioning, it's probably the number one question is how do we deal with food? How how do we put up food? What do we even put up? And I would say if you don't eat beans, don't store beans. If you want to learn how to um use beans, then buy them as part of your weekly staples and start integrating them into your diet, and then go buy the 25-pound bag of beans. Because otherwise, like you said, it's gonna sit in your back, um, the back of your closet for 25 years, and that's not doing anybody any good, and it's a waste of money, really. So um start small and re and honestly learn how to cook. Like I I kind of feel like that is one of the biggest things. Learn how to cook from scratch. Um, maybe something that you buy weekly that's in a box, try to learn how to make that thing from scratch because it's so much cheaper. And with inflation right now, it's a good idea to learn how to cook from scratch because it's less expensive. And yeah, oh, it's such a big question, Alison. I don't know how to answer that one sufficiently.

SPEAKER_05 32:02

I'm sorry. You answered it great. You answered it great. That was amazing. Um, you talked about failures, and I am just a big believer that um, and I actually, you know, I have uh wanted to talk a little bit about that later. I have another question that's kind of similar. Um, but we learn from our failures, like there's yeah, I love failure. I don't, but I do all at the same time.

SPEAKER_04 32:33

I don't really, but I really do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:37

What there are some of the mistakes that you made that were just the greatest learning experiences for you.

SPEAKER_03 32:46

Oh man. The biggest I I mean, and this this kind of goes back to my at my personality is that I tend to take off or bite off more than I can chew. I don't do that so much now, but I certainly spent the majority of my twenties and thirties doing that. And it it ca it what I've learned now is if a certain thing that I'm going to do causes a level of anxiety in me, so a different, different than like healthy stress, but anxiety in me, I just don't do it. Or I really think about it, or I really um try to do it in a way that doesn't give me that feeling. So when I like I mentioned when I first started the 25 chickens or the huge garden, I I would say my biggest failures have been connected to trying to do the big thing before I've even learned how to do the small part of it. Um learning and I did learn this, so when I got it and started to get into dairy animals, um, this is a piece of advice I often give people is I went and spent time on a farm with people that raised dairy cows for just our dairy goats, just for just about a year before I actually brought dairy animals onto my own property. And but it was learning from doing all of these catastrophic things where I couldn't take the pro proper care of the animals because I didn't have the proper infrastructure in place, or I just didn't know how or anything like that, um, and caused harm to myself and maybe even potentially to the animals because I didn't know what I was doing. Doing it like that, where I would just do it more slowly and more thoughtfully and not impulsively. I can be impulsive, and I I think those failures around impulsivity, around fighting off more than I can choose, have been the biggest um teachers to me, and I'm hoping we'll make the last half of my life a little less stressful than the first half.

unknown 34:34

Just to be perfectly honest.

SPEAKER_05 34:38

I think we are like we are so similar because that struggle was all the same things.

SPEAKER_03 34:44

I I thought that too when I when I first came across your content and I was looking through it, I thought, oh, I really resonate with this woman.

SPEAKER_05 34:51

Yeah. Um, Joe and I have a rule, and it's a rule that we have implemented because we learned it from very hard experiences that we do not buy an animal unless their house is already built.

SPEAKER_03 35:04

Amen to that, sister. Exactly. That is exactly my husband just insisted. Let's just put it that way. He's been like, that can I can never come home to an animal in the barn to you being like, oh, by the way, tomorrow we need to build infrastructure for this animal. Yeah, that doesn't happen here anymore.

SPEAKER_05 35:25

Yeah, we have we have been pretty good about that rule after some pretty awful experiences and learning experiences.

SPEAKER_03 35:33

Right. I hope people that are listening to us can can really take that one piece really to heart because it could save someone a lot of grief.

SPEAKER_05 35:42

Yeah, yeah. Um, so you you shared, you know, some of your mistakes. What is one thing or multiple YouTube's uh that you have done over the years that you just are really proud of?

SPEAKER_03 35:55

Gardening, I would say. I would say it's something um that I really love um doing. And so it's like I was saying before, it's like somebody else who likes painting or somebody else who likes you know, who has a passion for something. I have a passion for gardening and I'm really proud of everything that I've learned and the level that I'm at now compared to my first garden, which was a catastrophe. Um, I I feel like I've gotten to the point, I'm at the point now where I start, I would say, 99% of all of my plants from seed myself. I have a grow room in my house where I start things, and then my husband and I built a small greenhouse outside that we converted into a plant nursery, and um and I can produce food. My garden might not be the most beautiful and it might not be the most weed-free. In fact, that's a guarantee, it is the weediest garden I think I've ever seen on YouTube, but it produces a lot of food for this family, and I'm really proud of that. When I go down into my root cellar and I can see all the food that this family has has um produced this past summer, it is it it is just an amazing feeling. So I would say of all of the prepper-related types of things, that would be the thing that I feel um really good about and something I really like to share with people. It's just it's funny.

SPEAKER_05 37:19

I like that. And I love um seeing your garden in your Instagram stories because it it is very real.

SPEAKER_03 37:28

Yeah, I try as I I try to, oh boy, that's hard. That real thing online, it's not an easy thing, but I think it's important.

SPEAKER_05 37:36

Well, is there anything else that you would like to share with us today? I mean, I you send me answers to the questions I ask, and I can, you know, form some question topics that I think might be good, but you know you better than anyone. Is there anything else you want to share with us today?

SPEAKER_03 37:56

Um, I would say that if there was ever a time to look at preparedness, now is probably it. So I just was talking about not fear-mongering it with my family and all of that kind of stuff. And I I think that there is sometimes uh a time and a place for serious talk. And I do think that we are um in a time right now, I think most of us would would say that we've been there for a while and that things are are difficult. But I think that as far as supply chain shortages, inflation, um, I think they could have a pretty big impact on people, even if it's just over the short term, even if it's six months that we're going to be dealing with that. I think that in order to, if I could help to alleviate someone else's suffering by saying that now is a really great time to start learning some skills and particularly start putting up some food. I mean, farmers' markets are kind of coming to an end right now, but squash is cheap and squash stores really well. You can buy a squash for a dollar or two and can feed you for quite some time a good size squash, things like that. Just just start doing some research, start connecting people. Um, with people like Allison, myself, lots of other amazing women out there um who are doing this, and and just start. Now now is a really good time if you haven't started already to get some get some food stored. So that would be what I would say would be kind of the most important thing.

SPEAKER_05 39:27

Definitely getting started, I think, is something a lot of people are feeling right now. Um you shared in your Instagram stories recently, um, I think it was maybe two days ago, and listeners, the we are recording this uh podcast episode. Um it's beginning of October. So just so you know, if you hear stuff that we're talking about that maybe doesn't quite fit into whatever time this airs for, um, but you shared recently that um as your season of life changes, you're finding more time to devote to um your social media stuff and your web presence and your YouTube. And that is something I really resonated with as I was listening to your stories because my kids are older. My youngest is 13, my oldest is 21 or 24, it's almost 21. And um I'm finding I just have more brain power and time uh to devote to this passion that I have had for so long. And um, can you share a bit about one, where people can find you online? I know you have a couple different things going on, and what your passion is for these spaces.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

Sure, I would love to talk uh uh to talk about that when I so I'm on uh YouTube under Little Mountain Ranch and on over on Instagram as well. YouTube I would say would be my main where where I work the most. Instagram is something that I touch in with daily and I share snippets of my life throughout the day. Um but I when I started, it started as I I started when my youngest was a baby, and I did it as a way to have a creative outlet for myself and and a community of like-minded people because I had been watching YouTube um the Home to Dead kind of YouTube channels for about a year before I started myself, and it really attracted um me to be part of a community like that, and and it has turned out to be that it's been amazing, and I knew that over time as my youngest got older, that because I've been through it a few times, I knew once she hit around five that things would really shift as far as the type of need that she had for me. Um you know, on the you know, every five minute type of thing, like little ones need. And I and I sort of planned that I would shift gears into um more creating more of a job for myself that way. And that's what I've done. And it's it's been such a blessing to be able to be at home because I'm I'm home with my family, and to be able to do this, number one, to have the connections with all of these amazing human beings out there, it gives me a lot of hope for the future and for humanity because there's so many wonderful humans out there. I'm sure you've experienced that too. It's just like, wow, there's and so many powerful and amazing women who are out about inspiring each other and lifting each other up, which I just love. And then um also being able to share this kind of information during this really unique time that we're living in, where I feel like people can come. I try really hard on my content to to keep positive. I don't talk about politics or I don't talk about world events and things like that. That's just not what my my content is about. It's more about inspiring people to grow food and all of that. That's why it's fun for me to talk to you like this because this is not a side of myself that I get too engaged with in this way. So it's I you can probably hear the enthusiasm in my voice talking to somebody else like this because it's um it's it's just not something that I really talk about a lot, even though that's what I'm teaching. Um, it's not does that make sense? It's not just like a direct it totally does. Yeah. So I um it's really exciting for me to be able to shift things, and my husband is currently in the in the um position of being able to be home a lot more, which has allowed for us to split duties a little bit. Like I said, he's out with my kids right now so that I can sit here and do this with you, and that frees me up to do to share more of this content, and I feel very lucky to be able to do it, and also that I hope it's helpful. I hope it it um can offer something to this community that has some value.

SPEAKER_05 43:48

Yeah, I I can hear the passion in your voice when you talk about the community and inspiring and lifting up one another, and I just absolutely love that. Um tell us what your YouTube is and your Instagram um just one more time in case anyone missed it.

SPEAKER_03 44:08

Okay, Little Mountain Ranch is the name of my YouTube channel, and my handle on Instagram is the same. And um, yeah, and I share all kinds of stuff. I'm I'm just sort of fine-tuning what's happening on my YouTube channel as far as what content it is is most valuable to my audience, and I but I do share a lot about gardening over the summer season, food preparations. Um, we're just installing a wood cook stove in our um house right now. As we speak, actually, my husband's been installing the chimney all day today. Um, and so we're going to be doing some content around that, around learning, you know, how to use a cook stove. I've had a cook stove several times in the past, and so I'm so excited to bring that to people because there's so much nostalgia connected to it, but there's also a lot of skill that's connected to it that'll be fun to share.

SPEAKER_05 44:56

I have enjoyed seeing the pictures of it go in, and it's just beautiful. So it's so beautiful. I'm so happy. Thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. I just really enjoyed hearing your journey and your story and your heart for preparedness.

SPEAKER_03 45:12

Thank you so much for having me. This has been a ton of fun. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_05 45:17

Awesome. I'm so glad you joined me. So, as always, you can find me on Instagram at this prepared life if you have any questions. And if you have questions for Chelsea, you can find her on YouTube and Instagram at Little Mountain Ranch. Thank you so much for listening off. Thanks so much for listening to Down. Until next time, remember, every link and a gold.