Simply Rooted

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Savannah at Simply Rooted. You can also follow on Facebook.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Savannah at Simply Rooted. Good afternoon, Savannah. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm good. You're in Georgia? Yes. We are up in northern Georgia, very close to the North Carolina and Tennessee border.

00:29
Is it warm there? It is warm. Occasionally we will be up in like the 90 degree area, but mostly we stay in like the mid to high 80s. So like on average all summer long? Yeah, I would say so. It definitely gets hotter as summer progresses and that our winters are pretty mild. It's funny like we're all the way up in like the mountains of Georgia, but we're

00:57
technically a, I think it's called like a temperate rainforest here. So we do get a lot of rain in the winter time. Okay. Well, Minnesota, the summer can't make up its mind. What the hell it's doing. We were really, really cool over the weekend. I mean the high on Saturday, I think maybe got to 70. Wow. Maybe. And today it's really muggy and I think it's 75. And then, um, two weeks ago.

01:24
it was hot and the humidity was high. It was just gross. So we never know what we're going to get here. It's like a box of cracker jacks. You never know what the prize is going to be. So anyway, tell me about yourself and what you do at Simply Rooted. Yes. So I actually started Simply Rooted back in April and it really started as a subscription box. I am actually by career a registered nurse.

01:53
And so I work from home and I have my own company at home. I work with attorneys and I review their clients' medical records. But my husband and I, we have eight acres and we're very much into like the homesteading lifestyle, slow living type of thing. So I wanted to create a business kind of around this lifestyle because I'm so passionate about it. And I have a lot of our friends and family ask me,

02:22
about what I do, how I got started. And so I decided to kind of create a subscription box for those who are interested in that more simple living, slow living type of lifestyle. And so it's a quarterly subscription box and it comes in January, April, July and October. And so it's mainly seasonal, but we include products from

02:50
small businesses and small family-owned farms from other country. We put their products in our box and we usually shoot for about six to eight different products every quarter. They all kind of revolve around kind of like that home setting lifestyle, that simple living lifestyle. So, you know, we have non-toxic all-purpose cleaners, tallow body butter, tallow body soap. In this box, we have a peach jam.

03:17
and we have some non-toxic mosquito repellent. In our last box, we had a homestead and cookbook. And so just kind of things like that, kind of to push people towards cooking from scratch, creating a non-toxic home, getting in their garden and planting different things to kind of really push you in that direction. So there's so many people like with prices today that they really, and like just the stress of everyday life and they really just wanna take it slower.

03:45
and enjoy life and not have that stress that they have on a day to day basis. Okay. So I have a question. The in the subscription box is anything made by you or is it just from other crafters that you know? It's mainly from other crafters. We buy it through wholesale. We also have a couple of local people in our community that we get products from as well.

04:11
And then something new that I'm going to add here in the future is have our subscribers send in people that they know in their community and we can feature products from someone in their hometown. Nice. So you're a curator of good things. Yes, definitely. Yep. Fun. I should consider that.

04:38
I should think real hard about that because we do make stuff. We make lip balms and soaps and candles and whatever. And it's a lot of work. It's a lot of time. And I don't mind doing it. It's fine. But I like your idea better. Yeah. And it just gives a way to support the small businesses around the country. And a lot of these products you can't find on Amazon.

05:04
That's kind of like the whole point of it too, is that they're not readily available. And so by supporting these small farms, small businesses, you're supporting their kids and their college fund and all those great things. And then you also get a benefit of it too, if you get these amazing products that are actually good for you. And they come from good ethical people who care about your health as well. Yeah, I love it. That's a fantastic idea. Thank you. So I saw.

05:33
On your Facebook page, one of the latest posts, there's a candle and I can't think of the name of it right now, but I looked at the top and middle and bottom notes of it and all I want to do is wear it as a perfume. Those are some of my favorite scents. It smells so good. I am obsessed. I picked up the candles. It's actually from a family ran business here in my hometown and we have her candles in all of our boxes.

06:01
I picked them up and I'm like, oh my gosh, these smell like they it might be one of my favorite candle scents like ever. What's the name of it again? I can't remember. It's called Golden Hour. That's it. Thank you. Yes. And that's a perfect name for it because that's what I would I would think of. But I love bergamot and I love musk and I love citrus and and honestly the perfume that I wear all the time is an essential oil blend.

06:28
And it's a light musk and a light patchouli. And patchouli is terrible. Like, I don't love patchouli, but this light patchouli essential oil is beautiful, mixed with the soft musk. But there was a perfume out, I can't remember the name of the company, it was many years ago, maybe 15 years ago, that Target sold. I wish I could remember the name of the company. And it had tuberose as one of the...

06:57
the scents. Interesting. And I loved this perfume and it was actually like a like a face powder perfume. It was that texture. It wasn't a liquid or an oil. Okay. And I loved it and they don't sell it anymore. And it's probably a good thing they don't because it probably had all kinds of terrible things in it. I know right. But.

07:20
Those scents are amazing and I didn't even know what tuberose was until I looked at what the scents were and I was like, I need to find out more about this. Right, right. Yeah, I've never heard about you there. Yeah, so and ylang ylang or whatever that is. That was one of them too. But yeah, I love scents when we make our candles. Our whole house smells like whatever candle we're making.

07:45
And those are my favorite days when we do lemon grass candles. I'm high, high for three days on the scent of it. I love that though. You know, it's like, it's good for you too. It's not like it's, you know, causing any sort of damage internally, like some of those, you know, other candle, big candle companies. Yeah. I can't handle, I can't handle it when we do lavender. I love lavender. I do.

08:13
but the scent is so intense, it gives me a headache. It is. So I brace for it. When my husband says, we're doing lavender candles, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna down some Tylenol now before we even get started, because it's gonna hurt. It is, it's definitely a unique scent and it can be very strong, I agree with you. Yep, then we do a coffee scented candle. I love coffee, like I am a coffee fiend. Me too.

08:41
I will drink it, I will smell things that smell like coffee. I just, I love coffee. And when he says it's coffee candle day, I'm like, yes, it's coffee candle day. So there's a whole thing that goes with making things, you know, it's, it's the experience, it's the, the love of doing it. It's knowing that people are going to enjoy it when they buy it from you. That it just makes me so happy.

09:09
Okay, so now I raved about all the smells and scents and stuff. I saw that you have zucchinis right now. Yes, yellow squash, I guess. They are coming out of the garden like crazy. And we also have a ton of cucumbers and we only bought like four cucumber plants. But I think we are at like 60 or 70 cucumbers now that we've come out of the garden. I am so jealous.

09:38
We have nothing but radishes right now and peas because all it's done is rain all spring here. So my husband got the gardens in late because the dirt was soup. So we are very patiently waiting for the garden to finally dry out and start actually putting energy into growing what's in the garden. Yes. Yeah. I, that's hard to do. It's just so wet. Yeah. It's, it's been a hellacious spring here for the first time since we moved in.

10:07
four years ago. And so we're very disappointed because I keep seeing the photos come into my Facebook feed or the memories thing of everything we were pulling out of the garden this time last year and the year before and the year before and I just want to cry. It's not fair. But I'm hoping that we will have an extended autumn and maybe we'll catch up. Right. Yeah. Are you starting all your stuff?

10:34
from seed like indoors or do you just plant right in your garden? We've started a whole bunch from seed. And then we moved that all out to the finished greenhouse that just got finished in May. So the greenhouse is full of plants, but they need to get into the garden to get big. So as soon as we're sure that the garden is not going to be soup every other day, we'll get the stuff from the greenhouse into the garden.

11:04
But you know how this goes, weather is the thing that we all deal with when we're trying to grow things. Yeah, so it's funny, we actually watched this show on Amazon, it's called Clarkson's Farm, and it's about this, I think he's either a millionaire or a billionaire, I think he was on British's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, I think he hosted that show. And he bought like a thousand acre farm and decided he was gonna see what it was like to actually be a farmer.

11:31
And he's had three seasons now and watching how just almost kind of helpless they are with the weather because I mean, they're growing wheat and corn for the masses to sell and make a livelihood off of and it could either they're dealing with rain and drought, cold weather, warm weather, and it's, it's insane how

11:57
you know, these big commercial farmers, all the things they have to go through just to get their crop. Yeah, that's why we are not commercial farmers. I don't ever want to be playing that game. No, me either. Nope. The fact that our garden is basically not producing anything right now is not going to make or break us. It is sad. It is disappointing. Yeah. But we're not going to die because we didn't.

12:25
We didn't grow a big garden and sell the produce. Right. I can't imagine being in a position where our livelihood counted on this. Right, I know. I think about that often too. I'm like, I wanna grow all of our food on our own and I don't wanna lack the grocery stores. Then I'm like, I have to be thankful for the grocery stores because I can't imagine what it's like to not have that as a backup. Uh-huh.

12:52
We here in Minnesota, in LaSore, Minnesota, are very lucky because the town just south of us has a co-op store. They actually buy produce from local growers and then sell it. And so if we don't have a green bean crop, because they died, because they rotted out, we know where we can get really good green beans that someone nearby grew.

13:21
We also sell at the farmer's market whatever we have to sell. And so, so we know the vendors and if we're like our tomato crop went this year, they're going to be like, here, take these. And, you know, at probably a discount, who knows, but we are not without resources here because we live in the land of people who grow crops and grow farm to market gardens and, you know, we're not, we're not.

13:50
there's a bad word coming to mind, I'm not gonna say it. We are not in trouble if we don't grow a single thing in our garden this year. Right, right. Yeah, that's always good to have a community around that. Also does something very similar to you. That's kind of where we live too. A lot of people have gardens and I think especially in like recent years, I see a lot more gardens popping up. And even like our friends and family who never garden before are now having these amazing gardens

14:20
It's really cool to see people going towards that way because I did not grow up gardening. We had houseplants, but I also lived in South Florida where it was super hot. I definitely lived more in the city type of life. So growing up this way, I did not grow up with vegetables and farm fresh produce at all.

14:50
I want to say backyard garden, but it wasn't backyard. It was side yard. Side yard vegetable garden, because my parents had a garden from the minute they moved into our house in Steep Falls, Maine in 1976 when I was like six years old. And so I never didn't have access to homegrown produce. And my grandfather also grew a...

15:15
pretty decent sized produce garden at his place about an hour and a half away. Okay. So all summer long we were eating cherry tomatoes and cucumbers and whatever was growing we had free range to just go pick it and eat it. Yeah. So I did grow up with it and I loved it and I love this life that we're living now except that I don't know if I'm going to have any tomatoes to go pick out of the garden this year. I know.

15:42
If we lived closer, I would totally send you tomatoes because we planted like, I think we planted 20 tomato plants and they are all on the vine ready to go. They're still green, so we're waiting for them to ripen. But very soon here, we will be drowning in tomatoes. Yeah, we were drowning in them last year. Luckily, we canned a whole bunch of tomato sauce and diced tomatoes. So I'm not completely up the creek on this.

16:12
You know what I'm saying. There's nothing better than a sun-warmed tomato on a salad. I agree. With a little bit of salt too. So yes, and again, I sound like I'm an evangelist and I'm raving about homegrown produce because I am both. I keep saying I'm not an evangelist. I'm not saying everybody has to do this, but I love that we

16:40
do it. So when I'm talking to someone else who does it, it becomes this this fest of, of, yay, I love doing this and you love doing this. So, yes. Anyway, um, are you, do you have kids? No, we do not have kids. Um, I am 28, my husband's 30. We are in that stage now where we would like to have kids and we're trying for them, but as of yet, we don't have any. Okay. Yeah. Well,

17:09
when you do, they are gonna be some of the luckiest kids ever because their mom has it all together on this being healthy thing. I like to think so, so I mean, we do sourdough, we do as much produce as we can. And I've always like in my 20s, I was in nursing school at the beginning of my 20s and I kind of had this vision for my life. I was like, I have all these things in place that need to be checked off before I will have kids. And I finally feel like I'm

17:38
actually at that point now where like all those things are tucked off. Uh-huh. Yep and that's awesome and I kind of wish I had done that too but I didn't. But I also feel like the most perfect time to have kids is whenever they come. Right, yeah. I agree. So I mean I was very young with my first and I was 32 with my last and it all worked out so.

18:06
Yeah, I just pretty much, you know, if it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And we're just going to keep living our lives. Yeah. And honestly, if it doesn't happen in the way that it usually happens, there are lots of babies and kids looking to be adopted. Yes, absolutely. And I've had some really good friends who are adopted.

18:32
really great people and have touch base with their birth parents and it's all worked out great. Yeah, that's awesome. So there's options. Yes, lots of options. Yep, and honestly if I was younger and not so tired from already raising four kids to adulthood, I would consider adopting another one, but I think I'm good. I think I have done all the intense mothering I need to do ever.

19:00
Yes, definitely four kids. That's a lot. Yeah, I'm done. I'm 54 years old. I raised four great kids. I've done my job. I'm finished. It's all good. Time to relax. Yes, and can't actually relax because the youngest one still lives with us. But he's an adult and he helps out a ton here on our little quote-unquote farm. So he's a big help. Okay, so what else do you do?

19:29
You do the subscription box, you guys have a garden. What else do you do, anything? The only other thing that I do, which I know I mentioned, is I have my consulting business. So that actually is more of my day-to-day job. And I really enjoy that and I love it. I have the best clients and very interesting cases that we get. And so it's nice too, because I used to be a night shift nurse in the NICU, which I love.

19:57
but working night shift, working weekends, working holidays, is, it was not where I saw my life going at all. And that's kind of where this journey started, was I was thinking, I'm like, how can I make my monthly bills so low to where I don't have to work three, four, five days a week as a nurse and have to put in 60 to 80 hours?

20:23
just have the things that I want. And so I kind of, that's kind of how I also got into that home setting place where, you know, you don't have debt, you don't, you know, spend more than what you make. You live off the land as much as you can, you make your own products. And so I was kind of in that space and that's kind of also what led me to trying to find it, you know, trying to find different things that I can do with my nursing.

20:52
career and my degree. And so that's kind of how I got into consulting. So I can work from home, make my own hours, no more holidays or weekends, which is so nice. But yeah, so that's mainly what I do day to day. And then, you know, right now the garden is just always calling for us in the evening. So we do a lot of that. And then my husband and I always try to every Friday take off from work.

21:19
and we will go to a different waterfall or a different hike or a different swimming hole and kind of explore the area around us. And so we love doing that. And we honestly, we just live a very simple, slow life. Awesome. Awesome, you figured it out before you were 40. I try. Yeah. I'm gonna go back to the subscription boxes for a minute. Yeah.

21:46
How do you find the stuff? I mean, have you been, like, I find you guys to talk to because Facebook is amazing at feeding me more of what I'm interested in. So every day, every hour, there's a new homesteader or a new crafter or a new baker coming from my feed. Do you have that too? I do have that. That's kind of one of the things I love about Facebook and social media is the algebra doesn't point you.

22:12
into that direction. So I was talking to my husband, I'm like, I hate just like aimlessly scrolling on my phone, like I want to learn more more about gardening and cooking and all that stuff. And so that's something I like about Facebook is that it pushes you towards those people. Right now, kind of when I posted about my box at the beginning of the year, had a couple people reach out to me. And so for example, the girl who does our candles,

22:41
We put her candles in all of our boxes and we do like a it's very seasonal. The scent that we pick. But I also purchased off of a website called Fair, which is F.A.I.R.E. And the best way I can describe it is like Etsy, but for wholesale. And so all sorts of creators of different products will post their products on there and then you buy at the wholesale rate.

23:09
So that's how I kind of find a lot of our products. Eventually, you know, this is only our second box that we're doing so far. So eventually I would like to, like I said, reach out to our subscribers and see if they have anyone in their community that has a really great product and we can feature them in a box. So I think slowly over time we'll move away from FAIR and just get a couple of our products from there. But I would really like to support our...

23:39
subscribers community as well. Nice. Okay. I was just wondering, because now that you told me what you do, my brain is just spinning on how would I do something like that? There's lots of subscription box things out there right now. Yeah. It's funny though, because I try to look to see if anyone else did something similar to this.

24:07
And the only thing that I could really find was some people did produce boxes with like actual produce or I saw a lot of meats like frozen meats that would be shipped to your door. But I never could find anything where you would get a mix of different items from small farms, small businesses, family ran. That was like well curated and that would be shipped to you either either every month.

24:36
every three months, every other month. I could, I still have not found anything similar to that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I haven't heard of anything like what you're doing. I'm just saying there are so many subscription things out there right now that it's kind of nice to hear about somebody doing one like yours. Yeah, yeah. It's really just the whole point is to get people kind of...

25:03
back into their kitchens and cooking for their families, even if it's a quick meal, or even if it's just planting one tomato plant in a pot, doing those little things or making your own detergent or instead of buying the dove soap from the store, you're using our tallow soap. So just different things to kind of get people thinking and using.

25:29
understanding where their products actually come from. That's from a family and not a corporation. And so that's kind of like the whole ethical and the whole principle behind the box. Yeah. I love it. I love that that's the premise because not everybody knows where to find this stuff. That was the other problem that I ran into is I would do research on different products and items and I just could not. It's not like I would type in non-toxic.

25:59
you know, dish soap and you know, all kinds of things come up, but a lot of it is still big brands and big companies and some of their ingredients are still a little bit questionable, whether it's toxic or non toxic. And so I was like, I bet I bet there's so many businesses, small businesses that no one even knows about or you know, the masses don't know about that we could be supporting. And you know, with the subscription box, they also include like a pamphlet.

26:28
and on that pamphlet has each brand, what they stand for, a little bit about them, a little bit about their product or products. And so, you know, my subscribers are more than welcome to repurchase any of their products through those brands. Eventually, I would like to have a kind of a members or subscribers only store where they can repurchase their products all in one place. But for now, I encourage them to

26:58
you know, purchase from the brand that we buy from. And so you're supporting them once, but you're also supporting them potentially multiple times as well. So it's like if you liked the thing in the box and you want more, here's where you get it. Yes, exactly. Awesome, fantastic. I was gonna say, I don't wanna, it's gonna sound like I'm bad mouthing my parents, but I'm actually not.

27:26
It's just this thing that has confused me forever. My mom and dad, my mom is 77, my dad is 80, and my mom will be 78 this month, and my dad will be 81 this month. Go big. And I swear these people have been using margarine instead of butter for years. Uh-huh. I hate margarine. Me too. Okay? Me too. Number one, it's not good for you. Number two, it's not butter. Right.

27:57
And my mom's like, you know, she's like, have you tried using margarine in your cookies? And I'm like, yes. And I don't do it because they go flat. They're not, it's not made for baking with. And she's like, you always bad mouth margarine. I'm like, because it's not good for you. Ants won't even eat it. They'll eat butter, but they won't eat margarine. She's like, but butter, high fat, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, it's from milk.

28:26
cows. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's crazy. Like I like my mom was very much low fat. That's what they that's really what they preached. When we were growing up is low fat, low carb, sugar free, low sugar, all those types of things. And it's funny now, because you know, the studies on red meat and studies on dairy and gluten.

28:52
And what I've realized is a lot of those studies are on commercially processed, commercially highly processed dairy and red meat. They're not done. These studies are not done on locally raised, ethically raised, raw dairy, uh, meat that you raise on your land that's grass fed. You know, a lot of those things are not done on those things. So they say butter is bad, but butter is actually very like it's, I don't want to say it's very good for you, but.

29:22
You need fat, your brain needs that fat and you, you know, the dairy, or sorry, the gluten, the whole gluten thing with being gluten intolerance. And I tell a lot of people, I'm like, there's other options, you know, you have sourdough. You also have different types of wheat berries, such as like einkorn flour. That is an ancient grain, you know, we're given all these.

29:46
highly processed gluten and corn products to eat. And no wonder we're getting sick and no wonder they're saying it's bad for you. If you just go back to the source of the purest form of those ingredients, you're gonna be healthy. You're not gonna be obese and have arthritis and degenerative joint disease and all those things that we talk about are heart failure, heart disease, by eating good quality butter or raw milk or...

30:16
sourdough or kefir, anything like that. So it's so interesting how, I mean, no offense to the older generation, but the older generation is definitely kind of stuck in those ways a little bit. Yeah, and I finally said to my mom, I said, if you want to have margarine on your toast in the morning, have margarine. It's totally fine with me. I am gonna have butter if I have toast, because I want butter. I don't want margarine.

30:45
And so there are all these things that are In quotes bad for you that that my folks do all the time and I'm amazed that they are the ages They are that they've made it this far, you know, yep And and sugar dude. I have tried Maple syrup in my coffee. It's not right. I have tried Honey in my coffee. It's not right. Yeah, I'm the same

31:13
A tablespoon, a teaspoon of sugar in my coffee, regular size coffee mug in the morning, I'm good. Yes. Sugar, sugar is not going to kill you. Butter is not going to kill you. Excess is going to kill you. Right, or highly processed white sugar instead of the cane sugar or tons of turbinado sugar, different options of sugar.

31:43
you know, you and I probably didn't grow up this way. You know, you grew up eating margarine and highly processed white sugar and seed oils and all those things. And so trying to understand us a different way, there's different things you can do is also a challenge as well. Yeah. Turbinado sugar is the most yummy sugar I've ever tasted. It is really good. Yeah. I'm a big coffee person too. So I try to like make.

32:12
my own vanilla syrup and my own caramel syrup instead of buying it, you know, from Amazon or whatever. I think it tastes better too. Yeah. Yep. I think anything that you make yourself tastes better because you made it. Right. You know exactly what's in it. There's no fillers, no preservatives, no dyes. Yep. The only thing that tastes better than what I make is what other people make from scratch for me. Right. I will do that all day long.

32:40
It's so funny, like I make my husband a latte in the morning, so we got an espresso machine. And I'm like, he's like, I wish I could have this every morning, because sometimes I'll sleep in and he'll go to work. He'll be up earlier than I am. I'm like, I can teach you how to make it. And he's like, no, no, no, no, it won't be the same unless you make it for me. Uh huh. Yeah, my husband makes yeast breads. And the reason he makes them is because the first two times I tried to do it, I killed the yeast. And I was like,

33:09
you're better at this than I am you make it. Yeah. Yeah. And I keep telling him that I'm going to try my hand again at making yeast honey wheat bread, honey oat bread, because I love that. Oh yeah. And I've been saying it for months and I haven't done it yet. And he looked at me the day he said, it's summertime, you're not making honey oat bread now. I said, no, I'm not. It's too hot. Yeah. He said, you've been threatening for months to do this. He said, first cold weekend this fall.

33:38
I dare you to make honey oat bread. And I was like, all right, challenge accepted. So probably sometime at the end of September, I will be trying it and I will probably be saying, what did I do wrong? Right. Bread can be tricky. I don't usually have like, I mean, I will make yeast bread, but it's kind of, it's a little difficult, honestly, to get like the rising and letting the yeast like absorb in the water and the sugar and having your house at the right temperature. It can be a little tricky.

34:07
Uh-huh. And he just, he works this magic over it and it's always delicious. I'm like, you should have been a baker. Yeah. And he laughs. He's like, no, because then it would be work and I would hate every second of it. I'm like, okay, fine. Yes, you're right. But boy, he makes some amazing breads in the fall and winter because I don't know what you know about.

34:32
baking breads, but if you bake breads, it makes the house feel warmer, whether the house is actually warmer or not. It feels cozier. And the smell too is so good. So as soon as it gets cold on the weekends, I'm like, will you make a couple loaves of bread? And he's like, yes. Yeah, I was saying the other day as I haven't made sourdough in a while and I'm just like, I don't really want bread in the summer.

35:00
I don't know. There's something about bread in the fall and the winter and it's like that's that is my bread making period. Yeah, I figure the first weekend where I make a big batch of French onion soup, he'll probably want to make bread to go with it. Oh, that's the best. Soup and bread. Oh, man. So yeah, and I I'm not even a huge fan of bread. Like as a general rule, I don't eat bread every day because I don't feel like it's good for me and I don't enjoy it. Right.

35:29
but oh my God, homemade right out of the oven bread. That's the best. Yeah, and it's so funny because people, a lot of people don't even, haven't even experienced that in their whole life. I know, I know, it's insane. It's kind of sad though too that we've like gotten so far from doing those types of things. Like, you know, I, my mom was, she was a great cook. She was amazing cook and I learned so much from her, but we still.

35:59
We bought the bread from the store. She never baked bread. Um, you know, spaghetti noodles from the store. She never cooked your own noodles. And it's just like, we've gotten pushed so far into going to work, working nine to five, coming home, making a quick dinner, putting your kids to bed, and then doing it all over again, that there's no time, like we've almost like our society has created this life where you can't even really do that even if you wanted to, cause we have all these.

36:29
We want and need all these different luxury items. And the more you need and want, the more money you have to go and make, and the more you have to work. And it's like this vicious cycle that you can't ever get away from. Yeah. And then there's no time to actually enjoy the things that you wanted to do in the first place. Right. Yeah. So yeah, it is, it is a vicious cycle. And I'm, I'm not saying that everyone should.

36:58
quit their jobs and go buy a farm. I absolutely am not saying that. I guess what I'm trying to do with this podcast is just share other people's perspectives. And I'm so tempted to find somebody who lives like in the middle of New York City and doesn't do any of the stuff that we're doing and just see if they'll come talk to me on the podcast about what their life is like. Right.

37:28
Right. The thing is I have a feeling that it would come off as snotty and I don't want to do that. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah, I do know what you mean. It's hard. It's hard to because I encounter, you know, people all the time where they will never understand why we do what we do. And that's totally okay. And that's totally fine. And

37:55
there are some people that genuinely love to work and they want to be the CEO and they want to be in the Fortune 500 companies and that's what they genuinely love to do. For me, I thought that's what I wanted and I thought I need to build an empire and I need to do all these things and I need to work and you know, but it's so funny how things change so fast when you realize you just that's not what makes you happy at all. You just want to.

38:25
wake up in the morning and drink a latte on the front porch and go to your garden and pull some weeds and then come back up and make sourdough bread. You know, it's so funny how things change so fast. Yeah, absolutely. You can't know until you know. Right. And if you haven't been exposed to something new, you can't know that's what you want to do in the first place. Exactly. So, yeah. I mean...

38:55
back 20 years ago, 15 years ago, my husband and I were talking about, you know, our life after the kids were grown. And I was like, I would just like to have a house we don't have to repair every six months and a little bit of acreage. Like I would have been happy with an acre. And he said, what do you want to do with that? And I said, I don't want to do anything with the

39:25
I just want to have it so that our neighbors aren't 10 feet away from us. And he said, oh, so the acreage is for me? I said, yes, what do you want to do with it? He said, I want to grow a freaking huge veggie garden. I said, okay, cool. And so from that point on, all the things that we were interested in making happen at this future projected place was what we studied up on, what we learned about how we did our life on our city lot.

39:55
Yeah. And then four years ago, we actually moved to 3.1 acres. That's a big. With a house that we have not had to paint or patch or anything since we've been. It's been great.

40:11
And so we manifested its life. Yeah, we manifested this thing that we're doing now. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm very big into manifesting. I feel like you have to. You have to live like you already have it. Yeah, and we did. We grew a garden on our little tiny 0.10 acre city lot. And that 0.10 acre.

40:37
had a house and a four car garage on it. So you can imagine how small the garden was. Right, right. But we did it and we grew flowers and we grew from scratch and we made things and we did stuff in practice for where we're at now. And I'm so glad we did because I really wouldn't recommend anybody go from zero to a hundred in that situation. That's very overwhelming too.

41:06
It's overwhelming. It is, it's a huge, steep learning curve to go from DoorDash and a loft apartment to a big yard and a dog and a barn and you know. Yeah. It's like, oh, I don't know where I am or what I'm doing now. Right, it's exciting thinking about it. And I kind of had that a little bit too, like we.

41:32
move on to eight acres and I was like, I want a big garden. So we did a 4000 square foot garden. I bought all the seeds, all the stuff and I was like, Oh man, I'm a little overwhelmed now. I'm like, I'm just gonna. So in the preceding years, I just kind of was like, I'm just going to do minimal. I'm gonna learn this and get really good at these few vegetables and then we will add on to it later another time. And so I think a lot of people

42:02
end up quitting before they get started sometimes. And because it's exciting, you want to do it all. Like I'm a very much go big or go home type of person. So if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it like to the extreme and plant a 4,000 square foot garden. But I don't, I definitely don't recommend that. Yeah, I might go big or go home when it comes to the researching and learning about the thing that I want to do. Yeah.

42:29
And that really helps because as I research and learn, it puts it into a more reality perspective for me. And I go, OK, yes, I can do these things to start with. Right. So I love researching. I love reading. I love learning. I love learning, too. I tell my husband, I'm like, I just want to learn a new... Like I was feeling a little bit bored lately because I feel like our garden, this is like our third year in our garden.

42:58
I've really kind of mastered over the last four years cooking from scratch. I always love to cook, but cooking from scratch is obviously, there's a little bit more to it. It takes a little bit more time, a little bit more skill, but I feel like I finally got my sourdough together. I've got all these things together. And so I'm like, well, what's next? So I'm like, ready to learn a new skill. Yeah, that's kind of how the podcast happened. My

43:25
my youngest was going to be moving out and that actually didn't happen. Very long story, not allowed to tell it. Again, very important reasons that he is still living with us and he is a huge help. But I needed a new baby because I thought I was going to be dealing with emptiness syndrome. And it was either sob my eyes out every day or find a new baby. So the podcast became the new baby. And then basically a month and a half after I started

43:55
two months after I started it, he was back. And I was like, I have a schedule now, so here's what I'm doing. If you need me to, if you need time from me, you have to put it on the calendar. You have to let me know. And it took him a month to remember to put things on the calendar. Oh my gosh, yeah.

44:20
One day he was like, I need to go to this doctor's appointment and he can't drive right now. And I was like, um, that sucks because I have this thing that I'm supposed to be doing that I scheduled months ago. And he said, can you reschedule it? And I said, I love you. Yes, of course I can reschedule it, but this is why I need you to check with me before you schedule your stuff too. So it's a learning curve on this grownup.

44:50
relationship now. Yeah, that's definitely interesting that changes in relationships too with your children and trying to find that new thing that you want to do that fulfills you. Yep. Yep. And he was so funny because I told him I was going to do this. And when he came back, I really didn't understand my stats for what the podcast is doing, how it's progressing.

45:20
And he said, do you have stats for your podcast? And I said, I do, but I don't know what they mean really. I mean, I know how many downloads I'm getting a day. And he said, how many? And I told him, and he was like, that's not too bad for a baby podcast. And I said, yeah. I said, but there's this other number retention. And he said, what is it? And I said, 100%. And he swore at me and said, I don't even wanna talk to you about this and walked away.

45:48
And he was smiling the whole time. Yeah, yeah. And I gave him a minute and I said, why did you swear at me? And he said, because that's unheard of. No baby podcast gets that. You have loyal followers. Yeah, he said, you're better at this than you think. I was like, well, thank you, son. So there's been this whole weird re-establishing boundaries and...

46:13
time parameters and what we all need from each other with three people in this house. And it's been really, from a psychology standpoint, it's been really interesting. But thankful that he's here because he helps so much. Yeah, that's always so nice when you have that extra help too. Yeah, especially with the gardens and the chickens and he loves to cook so he cooks like two nights a week, which is amazing. Yeah.

46:43
What a journey. I did it right. I raised him right. Yes, you definitely did. 100%. All right. So before we get too far down this parenting rabbit hole, because I'm always up for talking about raising kids because I've done it for a long time. I'm actually going to let you go because I try to keep these to half an hour. And I, oh, and you wanted to share something about the subscription box. Yes. So.

47:09
For all your listeners, we are offering 15% off your first box. You can use the code podcast all in lowercase letters. Right now, our July box is sold out, but you can go ahead and pre-order the October box. It'll ship first or second week of October, is what we try to aim for. It's going to be all around fall.

47:38
You might see some elderberry syrup or fire cider. We'll definitely have a non-toxic fall candle, and we'll have several other things as well in there. All the good things. All the good fall things. Awesome. All right, Savannah, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Yes, absolutely, thank you. Have a great afternoon. You too. Bye.