The Homestead Journey

S3E139 Expectations Are Resentments Under Construction

• Brian Wells • Season 3 • Episode 139

Share episode

Welcome back to another episode of the homestead journey podcast. My name is Brian Wells. I am coming to you from three B farm and homestead here in beautiful upstate New York. And this is episode number 139 on today's episode. We are going to talk about how expectations are resentments under construction, but before we do that, Let's jump on over to this week's homestead happenings, and I will bring you up to speed with what we've been up to here on. Three B farm and homestead. This week was an incredibly busy week and it's one of those weeks where it just simply flew by. It felt like we blinked and it was gone. And quite frankly, there wasn't a lot going on here on the homestead per se. We had. Vacation Bible school going on at our church. And so that meant that every night, right after work, I got home, I fed the pigs and then my wife and I jumped in the car and headed on up to our church, which is about 10 miles away. Um, she was working with the preschool kids and I was working with the junior high kids. And it, uh, it was just one of those weeks, like I said, where it just seemed like bam, you blinked. And it was. Because VBS went from, it was supposed to go from like five till seven 30, but we would leave here a little after four so that we could get up there, get prepped. And then we weren't getting home till around 8, 8, 30, most evenings. And so it'd be quite Frank that meant that there were some things that did not get done around the homestead, For example, last Sunday evening, I actually went out into the garden and tried to get caught up because of us being gone the week before on vacation. And I picked a bunch of beans and then Bonnie and I snapped those beans. And by the time we got done doing that, it was, I wanted to say like 10 o'clock at night or 10 30. And I decided that I was going to Canem on Monday evening when I got home from vacation Bible school. Except. Monday evening, the fair entries were due and it took me a lot longer to get those fair entries in than I thought it would. In fact, because of the really crummy system that our fair uses, it took me over three hours to get our fair entries in. So that meant that the beans did not get canned on Monday evening. Well, Tuesday the farm truck arrived. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that here in a second, but. So Tuesday, I went down to pick up the farm truck and of course I couldn't just pick up the truck and head on home. No, I had to stand there and chat with my buddy, Chad. And so the beans didn't get canned on Tuesday either. And so Wednesday rolled around and I was all excited to finally be able to can those beans. And what I had done is I had snapped those beans. We had stuck them in some water and put them at a cool spot in our basement. But it wasn't cool enough. And they had sat in water long enough that they had started to ferment. And so I made the decision to just go ahead and turn those into pork and eggs. So it was a bit disappointing because it was a rather large stock pot full of beans, but it is what it is. And hopefully. We have some more beans coming on up there. Although to be Frank, I have not been up to the garden since I believe it was Tuesday. So who knows what's going on up there? I know naughty naughty me, but by the time that we were getting home from vacation Bible school, it was already starting to get dark. And then yesterday I spent most of the day working on. The new farm truck. So the farm truck that we got is a 1990 Ford, F two 50. I have posted pictures of it. I think a picture of it on our Instagram and Facebook accounts. So if you don't follow us there, definitely give us a like, or a follow, because that will keep you up to date with what we've got going on here on the homestead. And certainly the big thing this week was the fact that our new farm truck or new to us farm truck has arrived. So I bought it in Spokane Washington. My buddy Chad is, well, he's a, a flipper of vintage vehicles, shall we say? And he orders a lot of them out of the west and Midwest. And so he has certain connections out there. And so I was able to find. F two 50 on Facebook marketplace was able to work out a deal and ended up getting it shipped here to beautiful upstate New York, where unfortunately the salt that we use is going to eat that thing for dinner, which does definitely. Chad's heart a little bit, but, uh, anyhow it arrived. And as I said, Tuesday evening, I went down to pick it up. Well, the first issue that we noticed was that the battery was dead, but no big deal. The shipper thought that maybe what he had done is left the Keyon, which had run the battery dead because the battery is a new battery, I believe, as of may. And so Chad jumped it and I got it home and thinking that maybe the 20 some odd mile drive would have sufficiently charged the battery. I was very excited to drive it to work on Wednesday. Only to find out that the battery still was dead and it would not start. And so I thought, well, I will go ahead and put the battery charge on it. We will get it up to full strength and we will see what we get. And so from the time that I plugged the battery charger in at noon, when I was home for lunch, until I got home that evening, it went from about 52% to only 66%. So I was kind of scratching my head, trying to figure out what in the world was going on. When I realized that you guessed it. I had left the key on and so the battery was simply trying to charge age rating battery. Once I was, uh, smart enough to take the key out of the ignition, the battery charged right on up, and I was able to start it. So the first thing I wanted to do before I drove it around too much was go ahead and change all of the fluids. And one of the things that I had noticed when I was driving the vehicle home on Tuesday evening was the fact that the temperature gauge was not working. And so in conversations that I had with my buddy, Chad, who was probably gonna be sick of hearing from me, he suggested that I swap out something called a tempera. Sending unit. So I ordered one from advanced auto and picked it up on Friday and went to install it on Saturday. The good news is, is that the replacement part fit into the block? The bad news is that the shaft on the top that connects to the truck with kind of let's call it a rubber boot, almost like a spark plug boot. That shaft was a little bit bigger in diameter and a little bit longer than the stock temperature sending unit. And so what I opted to do was to remove it, take it back to advance auto and see if I could find the actual legit right. Part, because I didn't want to have to cut off the end and crimp on an eye and then connect it with a, a nut. I, I wanted to have the right part. Unfortunately, there was not anybody even semi, locally that had the Motocraft part in stock. Well, I didn't check with a Ford dealer. I don't know if they would've had it or not, but I didn't wanna pay the Ford dealer prices. So I didn't even bother checking there, but I checked the usual suspects, AutoZone advance, auto O'Reilly's and Napa Napa was able to get me the part as of Monday afternoon, hopefully. And so I will be picking it up then, and then I will be moving forward, but I, I did go ahead and flush. The coolant system and things didn't look too bad. Definitely looked like it was ready for a change, but it didn't look too bad. And I am also prepared to change the oil. And I also swapped out the air filter and I was very glad that I decided to do that because when I pulled that apart, I found that mice, I dunno something, I dunno, it was mice, rodents, whatever they got out there in Washington state had built a nest. In the air box. And so I do have that all cleaned out and ready to rock and roll, but I did discover another issue as I was working under the hood. And that is that it does appear that the exhaust manifolds are cracked. So I'm gonna have to address that. So we'll. But my goal with this folks is to wrench on this truck as much as I possibly can. I've shared with you before that I do not enjoy wrenching on vehicles, and that is the absolute truth, but I also want to learn how to do some things that I have not done in the past. Now in the past, I've changed oils. I've changed alternators. I even changed the rack opinion out of a vehicle once with the help of my. I've changed water pumps. I've done some stuff on vehicles, but I certainly am not a mechanic. I'm not the son of a mechanic. And I will tell you for sure that it is not something that I enjoy doing. But it is something that I do want to learn more about, and this is certainly a vehicle that is of an age that isn't as computerized as the vehicles of today. And so I certainly feel a little bit more comfortable working on it than I would let's say on our 2014. Escape that is virtually all computerized and has a cockpit that looks like the, uh, enterprise Starship enterprise. Right? so this is part of my, well, if you wanna call it self reliance, uh, plan, I guess, just trying to become a little bit more informed and a little bit more, uh, in tune, I guess, with, um, my mechanical. But, um, I, I don't plan on doing this for a living that is for sure, but very excited to have that truck here. It is very, very solid. Virtually no rust on it, especially like the, the rust that we normally get up here in beautiful upstate New York. I'm I'm sure that's going to change. As I drive it during the winter, but very excited to have that truck here. And if you have any tips or tricks, if you've had a early nineties Ford truck before, and there's any kind of words of wisdom that you can impart, I would be glad to hear from you, Brian, at the homestead journey.net is my email address. A few other things that I wanted to share with you Today. I took the boy scout troop that my son is a part of to summer camp. So that again, meant that there wasn't much getting done here on the homestead. And by the time I got home, it was 97 degrees. The. It's cooking here in upstate New York folks. And it's supposed to keep cooking until I think Tuesday. And then after Tuesday, things are supposed to moderate a bit, all that to say that there is not much, that's going to get done outside here on the homestead today, I'm going to stay inside where the AC is running and then tomorrow maybe. I'll play a little catch up outdoors, or maybe that will wait until Tuesday and I'll try to get that truck ready to rock and roll. One final thing that I did want to share with you, and this is a bit of a sobering story, but we were informed yesterday evening that an eight year old boy from our church, uh, died in a farming accident. And it's something that it hits you hard as a parent, no matter, no matter what, when you hear of another parent suffering the loss of a child. And quite frankly, I don't even, I don't care whether it's a child, the age of a child, or if it's someone's child, that's an adult. It there's just something that's not natural about parents burying their children. But especially when it's an eight year old boy and it's a boy that's died in, in a, in a, basically a farming accident, we'll call it. He was on a, on an ATV. I don't know all of the details. But then when it's a boy from your church and who's been in children church, that you've been a part of, um, it, it hits hard. And so on this episode, I dedicate it to, and. If you could, if you are someone who is a person of faith, if you could just pray for his mom and dad, his grandma and grandpa and his brother and sister, it sucks. It's hard. And if you're a parent, just hug your kids a little bit tighter tonight with that said, let's jump on over to this. Week's charting the course. Several months ago, I ran across a quote that says this expectations are resentments under construction. And when I read that quote, the, the preacher in me said, Ooh, that'll preach. That will preach. That's going to make a great podcast episode. And so today is the day. Now I did some research just because I, I always tried to attribute quotes to the proper individual. And this allegedly was first penned by an author by the name of Anne Lamont. I don't know anything about Anne Lamont. All I know is that she originally, allegedly is the source of that quote. Expectations are resentments under construction. When I first read that, it just really resonated with me. This is certainly true in any area of life, but in particular, when it comes to homesteading, I have seen so many people with unrealistic. Expectations with regards to what homesteading is all about. And then I have seen, as they got into the day in, day out humdrum, that is homestead, the newness had worn off and it didn't live up to the. And that's a big part of the reason why I really try to keep things real here on this podcast. It's not because I'm trying to be a Debbie downer, but it's because I want you, if you are someone who is thinking about becoming a homesteader, you're someone who's thinking about moving to the country to your 5, 10, 15, 20 acres of land. You've bought a farm or you've bought property, and you're going to build a homestead from scratch, but maybe you are somebody who is just doing this in an urban area or a suburban area. I want you to come into this with your eyes wide open home setting can be, be. Home setting can be fulfilling. Home setting can be fun. Home setting can be funny. Home setting can be a wonderful time with your family. Home setting can be so many wonderful, positive things, but home studying sometimes can be stinky. It can be smelly. It can be heartbreaking. It can be disappointing. It can be discouraging. It can downright suck. And if you come into home setting with unrealistic expectations, you are eventually going to resent the lifestyle expectations are resentments. Construction. And so, as I thought about that, I thought that I would just share with you, and these are topics that I've probably covered at times in other episodes, but I just thought I would share today five ways in which people can have unrealistic expectations. With regards to home setting. And if you have this unrealistic expectation, you are setting yourself up for resentment. The first one is this, that home setting is easy. That it's the simple life I've shared with you before. How I so strongly dislike that description of homesteading, because the easy way to fill your. Freezer with meat, the easy way to fill your pantry with vegetables. The simple way to do that is to go to the grocery store and to buy meat on sale, to go to the grocery store, to buy vegetables and a can. And to put those in your freezer, put those into your pantry. And I'm not saying that that's always bad. I'm not saying that we don't do that from time to time. We don't raise all of our meat. I, I would say we are probably close to growing 90% of our vegetables. during the off season in particular, we do buy a lot of salad fixings at the store, but during the summer and really year round, We don't buy a lot of vegetables like green beans or corn or things like that because we have grown it, preserved it and put it into the freezer or the pantry. But that's a lot of work. That's not easy. That's not simple. So if you go into this thing, thinking that it is that it's going to be easy to grow a garden, that it's gonna be easy to raise chickens, that it's gonna be easy to do all of these things. Eventually you're going to resent it when. Crops fail when animals die. When jars don't seal, when freezers get unplugged or power outages happen and you lose all of that food, you are going to resent it if you think that homesteading is easy. the second expectation that people have is that home setting is going to save them money. We've talked about this before. Perhaps over time, your ROI will be there, and it certainly does depend on how you compare things as to whether or not home setting is going to save you money. But if you are thinking that you are going to save money on your grocery bill and you have been shopping at Aldis or your regular grocery store or Walmart, and you've been buying vegetables in a can there, or you've been buying your meat at those grocery stores, I'm gonna tell you right now, it's going to cost you far more money to raise and grow your own food than it is to going than it is to buy. Through conventional means. There's a real cost to growing real food this idea that you're going to somehow get into homesteading and save money is gonna take you a long time to realize that savings. If you're buying a Canor and you're buying jars and you're buying lids, all of that stuff adds up and yes, over time, the costs start to come down. But I can buy a lot of canned goods at Walmart for what it takes me to put in beans and so on and so forth. Now I've also said before on this podcast that I'm not necessarily comparing apples to oranges when I compare the beans that I can to the beans that you get in a can in a store. And there's certainly a lot of truth to that. There's a real cost to raising real food. I think it's very important for us to acknowledge that and not sell people, a bill of goods. Where they have this expectation that they're gonna come into home setting, get all this gear and save all this money. And when it doesn't happen, there's resentment. That happens because it's expectations are resentments under construction. The third thing is one that really drives me nuts. And this is the pretty, pretty princess version of home setting that cottage. Frolicking in the Meadows with the daisies in your hair. Now I'm not saying that home setting has to be ugly. It's not what I'm saying at all, but on the other hand, there are times when home setting is dirty and it's stinky and it's frustrating. All of those things. It is far from pretty far from. And so if you are getting into homesteading with kind of the Joanna Gaines version of farmhouse chic in the back of your mind, it's probably not gonna happen. I'm just saying probably not gonna happen. Expectations are resentments construction. Another big one is this, that homesteading is an escape from the rat. People who have been living an urban in a suburban lifestyle where they're running their kids to soccer and they're running to kids to karate and they're running their kids to this musical instrument practice and they're running their kids to this club and event. They think that they're going to move to the country and they're going to have this idyllic escape from the rat race. Folks you're simply trading one rat race for another. That's really what it boils down to. When you get past the newness of homestead, homestead can be pretty humdrum. It's just a different rat race that you're involved in. Not just that, but if you have kids. Your kids are still probably gonna wanna be involved in activities now, maybe different activities, maybe instead of them being involved in karate. Now they're involved in four H instead of them being involved in some kind of sports, maybe they're involved in barrel racing on horses. I don't know what it is, but what you're going to find is now you're having to haul your kids farther for them to be involved in activities. It's just how it works. So this idea that homesteading is an escape from the rat race is an expectation. That is a resentment under construction. The last one I'll leave you with. And this by no means is a complete list at all, but this is one that I see very, very frequently on home setting groups. And that is this expectation that you found home setting. You're excited about it. And why won't your wife or husband, your spouse, your significant other, or your kids get on. People expect that their family is going to be just as enthused about it as they are. And when that doesn't happen, it breeds resentment. The fact is folks, not everybody is cut out for this. Not everybody is going to love this. Not everybody is gonna wanna do this. And you know what? You may end up having to do this on your own. You may have to temper things, dial things back a little bit. That's just the reality of it. To a certain extent on this episode, I kind of feel like the homestead curmudgeon. like a Debbie downer, but folks, I do want to keep it real. And I do want to make sure that when people get into this. They come into it with their eyes wide open and that you have realistic expectations and that when things don't necessarily measure up to the ideal that you had in your mind, that you're going to be able to cope with it, because my goal is to encourage as many people as to make homesteading a lifestyle, not just something you do on the weekends, not just something that you are doing because everybody else is doing it. Not just something that you're getting into, because you're scared that the world's going to end because of all of this doom and gloom, prophecy by so many people within the home setting genre. No, I want you to get into this because it's very, very fulfilling. It's very, very satisfying. There is so much good that comes as a result of a homesteading lifestyle, but it's not all peaches and cream. It's not all unicorn farts and rainbows. So I wanna make sure that you have the proper expectations and you're not breeding resentment and end up throwing your hands up and walking away with all of that said, folks, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, anything at all, you can reach out to me, brian@thehomesteadjourney.net. Also keep in mind. That tickets are on sale for home 2022. That is going to be taking place in Greenfield, New Hampshire on September 10th and 11th, which by the way is just a little over a month away. So you're not gonna wanna miss out on that more information on that can be found by going to mindful homestead.com/hone H O N as in Nancy E 2022. Until next time everybody keep up the good work.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Brian Wells Sr

Host