Because the dirt is a getting to know you session. And today I want to continue along with the last topic that we talked about, which was why we homestead and transition into, uh, how we homestead or how we got started. Homesteading. I know there are a lot of people that have this question as to what do they do next? What steps do you take to begin homesteading? Um, and I'm going to just kind of briefly go over the last couple of years, um, of our life and the steps that we took that kind of led us on this homesteading journey. I'm not promising, this is going to be short. So grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea or whatever you drink and sit back. And, um, hopefully you'll enjoy the story. So, uh, it all started about two years ago and my husband and I were, uh, on the fast track, we were both working for a local midsize company.

And, uh, we had in our heads that we were going to retire with this company. Uh, we were fully dedicated to, to working there. Uh, we were putting in 60 to 80 hours a week, um, and we were both in leadership roles, uh, for this company making huge changes and progress. And as companies do, um, they sold to a private equity and the new owners brought in their board of directors, brought in a new CEO and we knew what was coming next. Um, I was able to get out literally a week before they started doing the majority of firings. Uh, my husband wasn't so lucky. Um, he was part of what the initial cuts and, uh, that was, that was quite a devastating blow to both of us. Uh, I mean, when you, you kind of have this in your head that you're going down a certain path and that's what you're going to do, and you're fully dedicated on doing and doing that.

And then all of a sudden, the rugs torn out from underneath you and you realize that, you know, it's, you're, you're the middle of your career and you have to start all over again. Um, it's, it's pretty devastating blow. So my husband took some time off to kind of reevaluate what he wanted to do. Um, and I, uh, jumped ship and went to another company which was, uh, out of the pot and end of the kettle, so to speak. Um, that's the company that is spoke about in the last video where I was in a very high stress position. And I, I brought with me from the other company, my, I guess, my will to do better and to make changes. And this was a very large corporation. Whereas before in a mid-sized corporation, you're able to make those changes somewhat, uh, in a large corporation, not so much, there's so much politics and red tape that basically I just felt I was a warm body there taking up space. And after several months of doing this, I found myself, you know, staring out the window of this air conditioned building and thinking. I just wish that I could have a job where I was outside. I just want to be outside. It felt like it was an eight hour prison sentence every day. I just wanted to be able to rake leaves or do something outside. It didn't matter what I just didn't want to be in this building anymore. Not doing anything, not making any progress, not helping to contribute to anything.

And that's kind of what triggered the whole homesteading process here. Um, so the, the first job that we lost, uh, kind of made it, realized that we needed to be more self-reliant self-sufficient, we couldn't really rely on another company to provide our income for us. And that kind of planted that self-reliance bug, even though I am, you can see woods behind me. Uh I'm actually, I have some, uh, the I'm in a suburban neighborhood and I do have, uh, a lot of the city starting to crowd in on me. So I apologize for the background noise. So in my story, where was I a second job? I started realizing that money's not everything. Um, I wasn't going anywhere with this job. It wasn't fulfilling. And so I realized that I couldn't just quit my job unless I made some drastic changes to my, my income.

Um, and that's what I started doing. And I ended up quitting that job. And then the third part that happened, the third series of events that happened in this transition was, uh, I ended up going, um, basically on a, I guess, a trip to find myself. I went to Nepal on a solo trip to hike the Himalayas. And, uh, that was an extraordinary event, uh, extraordinary trip with extraordinary events that I'll probably talk about in another video. Um, but it was that trip that sealed it for me as to what direction I was going to go. Because prior to taking the trip, I was a person that really loved adventure and wanted to see if the grass was greener. On the other side, I love traveling. And after that trip, I realized that there is nothing better than what I'm going to have right here.

Uh, w what I have in front of me, the life that I have here at home is, is enough on content doing what I'm doing. So there was a sense of contentedness instinct put that I got from that third event to the first one, kind of made me realize that we need to be more self-reliant the second event that happened made me realize that money's not everything. And then the third was that I'm content being where I'm at. And so that kind of started our homesteading journey. Now up to this point, um, we were pretty good about debts. I think money is a really big issue here when it comes to homesteading, especially if we're talking about quitting jobs, um, we're up to this point, we had no debt except for our mortgage. We were very good about, um, not having any, anything hanging over our heads like that.

And, and, and I came at a great cost. I mean, like I said, we were putting in 60 to 80 hour weeks, each wasn't paying attention to the kids. I mean, there was a great cost to that. Now at this point I had quit my job. My husband was, uh, kind of on a sabbatical with his career, trying to figure out what to do next. And, uh, at this point we had a lot of, we had a lot of expenses, um, uh, a lot of expenses that we didn't need, and I kind of cover those. And I'm going to cover more in some videos about, you know, how to save money, but stupid stuff like wasting money on paper towels and on hair products and on services like that, haircuts and, um, getting car washes and just, uh, foods that I didn't need to, at this point, we started really cutting down on all the expenses that we had, our heat or electricity anywhere we can save a penny.

I mean, literally we were, we're documenting everything down to dollars and cents as to where we can make cuts and how we can get it cut further. How can we get it cut further and paring it down to where we're living on less than a third of the income we were living on before? Um, so we're, so the next step for us was in paring down all those expenses, and then in trying to replace those expenses with things that we could do here at home. So, uh, the first step for me was, and learning how to can, um, I purchased a water bath canner first, and I learned how to water bath can. And then my second purchase was a pressure canner, both have been tremendously beneficial investments to us because we've more than gotten our money out of them in the savings we incurred from processing our own foods.

Um, and then, uh, the next step was in learning how to garden. We had a garden here that we tried a couple of times. Um, actually I'm kind of a black thumb when it comes to gardening. I, I'm not very good with plants. Um, and so this is, this has probably been the hardest thing for me to learn. Um, but we really went full on with our garden this year. We did do a deep mulch, um, and we had some, you know, some good success with our garden. And, uh, we had a lot of failure too. It was, it was a really, really bad year for gardening. Uh, and I, and it was more so for me because I'm not experienced, but in talking to actual local farmers, um, and just with a really warm winter last year, there were an extraordinary amount of bugs this year. Um, and the heat was up to 107 degrees here. And so, uh, it was just a really, really bad year all around for produce. Um, but I did get some, a little bit of yield and the fact that I got anything out of it is success because it's more than I got before. So I'm talking that up as a success. So we started our garden and now we're the stuff that we were previously purchasing at a grocery store. I'm trying to start growing here. So that was our next step.

And then probably one of the biggest commitments we made to homesteading, um, was in June when we ordered our chickens, actually we ordered them in February. They didn't come until June. Now, this is, I'm just going to be perfectly honest. We're never going to get their money out of those chickens that we invested in them, at least not in eggs or even in meat, not that they're not meat birds or layer birds, but what I get out of them in being able to produce eggs on my own farm and the experience of learning, how to be a poultry keeper, and just the enjoyment of having those birds around more than makes up for what I invested into the fencing and their housing and their food. And I, I jokingly, um, put a, put a comic on our website, um, that has two people receiving a box of chicks that says farm in a box on the side.

And the caption is something along the lines of, uh, we're officially farmers now, um, hidden, that's kind of a tongue in cheek joke, but that's, that's how we felt. You know, we, we kind of felt like this, this was official now. I mean, we're making a commitment to go down this path and we're going to do it. And, uh, so th the chickens were a huge step in, in going down that path towards homesteading. Um, and we absolutely love those birds. I mean, they are, I just love them. There there's so much fun. And they had her nut laying hat that hopefully within the next couple months, um, we'll, we'll start seeing some aches, but, um, wonderful birds regardless. I love having them. So, uh, now we're at the point, wait, where no, wait, we're trying to figure out, um, what I, multiple streams of income previously, you know, when my husband and I were both working for this company, we had all our eggs in one basket.

Both of us were working for the same company that, you know, got sold and we were not diversified in our income. And now we're at the point where we don't want that to happen to us again, we don't want somebody to just come in and rip the rug out from underneath us. So we are working on setting up our streams of income, both passive and active streams of income. Um, I don't know if you're not familiar with that. So passive is something where you invest money in initially, and it has a long-term return on that. And then active is going out and getting a job and working for somebody, um, whether it be part-time job or telecommute job or whatever that is. And so we're both working on diversifying that so that we have some money coming in, it's coming in from different areas and that, uh, we're setting ourselves up for success.

Long-term um, so that's kind of where we're at and that's the kind of the path we took. Um, one thing that I didn't mention there is our mortgage. Now, this was something we had been chipping at for many, many years, and, uh, we recently just paid it off. So we are completely debt free at this point. Um, that is a tremendous step to us. So we basically took everything we had to, to get to this point. Um, and, but now we're, we have a clean slate. So we are, we have no debt. And we, we own our house, which is a 1970s ranch on about a little over an acre. Um, it is in a suburban neighborhood that, uh, is not ideal for homesteading. Um, the house is situated towards the backend of that one acre with the whole front yard being the, the, the, uh, the, the front facing of the house, which kind of makes it difficult to kind of hide stuff or do something.

Um, because everything's out in front view of all the neighbors, which are slowly building up around us, the properties are all getting built up. And, um, there are actually some beautiful homes that are coming in next to us. So we're kind of like low man on the totem pole in this neighborhood, but we, we don't want to, we know that we don't want to stay in this property. I mean, you can hear the traffic back here. That's annoying in itself. I mean, we don't, um, we, we just would rather be listening to nature and the birds and not cars going by. We know we're not going to stay on this property, but right now we're kind of stuck here. So we're trying to make the best of it. Um, so we're, we're doing what we can homesteading wise. We, we have a garden, we have a lot of trees in this property, and there's only one spot where a garden spot where a garden is that only gets about six hours of light a day.

That makes as another challenge onto our gardening. Um, we, uh, have some old landscaping out front that we're working on, uh, redoing and trying to make it a little more permaculture, adding some food into the landscaping. Um, there are a couple of spots of light we get up there. Um, I don't know. I feel like we might be better on growing mushrooms on this property. Maybe we should, especially a specialty farm, but, uh, like I said, we're, we're trying to learn a little bit at a time and do what we can here. And, um, eventually at some point, you know, we'll might be in a financial situation where we can move to a bigger property, um, have some outbuildings. Um, but, uh, that's kind of it, that's where we're at now. That's kind of the steps that we took to get here. Um, I hope that's been helpful to you guys. Um, if you guys are looking to transition on this journey, I know that not all of you are in a similar situation, but this is, this is our situation. And we wanted to share that with you and kind of where we, we are with it and where we came with it. Um, so anyway, I hope that's been helpful and, uh, you guys have a wonderful day and if you'd like this kind of stuff, please subscribe, share it like it, and we'll see you next time.