Today I'm talking with Westen and Taylor at modernhomestead95. You can also follow on Facebook.

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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Taylor and Westen at Modern Homestead 95, and I'm sure we'll find out what the 95 is about. In Arkansas, did you say, Westen? Yes, we are. We're in Northern Central Arkansas. Awesome.

00:28
I told you to shut your video off because it uploads better without the video. But from what I saw before you shut the video off, it looks beautiful in Arkansas. Is it gorgeous there today? It is. Yeah, it's a 55 degrees and it's spring's starting to show itself. So we got all the trees blooming and the grass is turning green and starting to grow. things are all coming alive. All the bugs are coming out. Yeah. favorite part. Homesteaders.

00:57
Favorite time of year, I swear, is March and April. Yeah, it's a good time. Get everything going and just life seems to be waking back up. So yes, the long, horrible winter is almost over. I'm in Minnesota. It is sunny. is windy as hell this morning and uh it's only about 35 degrees. So I was going to say probably still cool up there.

01:22
Yeah, we had a 90, not 90. I think it got to 81 last weekend. Okay. And then it cooled right back down. I was like, okay, that's the second fall spring. Maybe the next one will be the real one. You know, we've done that a couple of times down here too. We kind of warmed up. What was it the other day? 89? Yeah. Yeah, I think we might've even hit 90 and then it's, it was 35 last night. So. Yeah. 90 in March is just gross.

01:51
Yeah, it's like we're not ready for summer yet. No, no, you cannot go from winter to summer overnight. We have to have spring. Yes, yeah, much nicer with them intermittent gradual incline. Yes. So the name of your place is Modern Homestead, Modern Homestead or 95. What's the 95 about? So my wife and I were both born in 1995. Okay.

02:19
So, yeah, we... It's a good year. Yeah, it's a good year and Modern Homestead was taken and so this is Modern Homestead 95. Well, that is a brilliant thing to call it. My kids are 36 and 34 and 28 and 24. So my older two are

02:48
are right around you guys' ages. yeah, yeah, it's perfect. Yep, it's so funny because I used to think that 30 was old. No, 30 is not old. Right. Yeah, I just realized that a little while ago. Yep. turning 30, we're like, no, we're still some spring chickens. Yes, and even at 56, you can be a spring chicken. Just make sure you take care of your health until you get there. I remember that. Yeah.

03:17
Tim McGraw has a song called in my, I don't know the name of the song, but the chorus is in, or the verses start within my next 30 years. And in my next 30 years, I want to be 25 again. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. So what do you guys do at the Homestead? And did I read that it's, you've been, the Homestead has been a hundred year in the family? Yeah. Well, it's not in the family. we bought,

03:46
our property and house two years ago in 2023 and we moved out here to Arkansas from California. Oh wow. Yeah, so we were just just tired of all the the nonsense that California has going on with it. Just we don't need to get into politics and everything but we don't agree with a lot that the state has going on and the way they handled

04:15
COVID and everything, we just didn't feel like it was the right way to go about it. um we've been looking for a place to move for already a year when COVID started going on. And we had traveled around a couple of different states and looked. I've lived in Texas and Mississippi and driven from coast to coast and back.

04:45
And we took a trip out to Florida and looked and it was just getting pricey and we couldn't really afford what we wanted. And one day we were sitting in our apartment at the time. We had a little 600 square foot apartment or something. And my wife Taylor was like, have you thought about Arkansas? And I was like, I don't know anything about Arkansas.

05:12
We started just looking it up and researching and it's just kind of checking the boxes. And we had a pretty good list of stuff we were looking for, wanted and needed and things like that. And so we just kind of went down the list and it seemed to align pretty well. And we were like, let's take a trip out there and see what it's all about. And we did. We spent two weeks or a week, one week driving around in the car.

05:42
and just sleeping in the car and fell in love with it. Trying to find where we wanted to be in the state. But yeah, we did. We really liked just the landscape and the people are laid back and just down to earth. you know, we'll help you if you need it. just lots of God fearing people and beautiful country. And the price was right. We found a spot. um

06:11
not too far out of town and we bought a house with seven acres and we've just been... uh The house is what was 100 years old and just needed everything. um I mean, we've... Gosh, we've done so much in the last couple of years since we've been here. Gotten dropped by our homeowners insurance a couple of times for things and, you know, had to rush to fix stuff to get...

06:40
our insurance back and yeah, actually last week we just got kind of to a stage where we're going to call it in quotes, let's say done. We've replumbed the whole house, redone all the sheetrock and texture and paint inside and move some walls around and tore down some walls and

07:07
We completely redid the whole kitchen, reframed the floor in it and everything, new cabinets, all new appliances. Went through the outside of the house. We got a new roof. Just sealed everything up, painted the whole house. So it's been a journey. And along with all that, I work full time and we were pregnant when we moved out here.

07:38
with our first kid and had her and then got pregnant again and we just had our little boy, our second kid. um in the middle of all that, we decided we, you know, wanted to do what we came out here for and that was just kind of be a little more, I don't want to say self-sufficient because self-sufficient is such a uh big encompassing uh umbrella.

08:08
But I think we just wanted to be a little more, I guess, stable kind of in our own environment where we know where our food's coming from a little bit and it doesn't have all the chemicals and pesticides and everything that are on it from the store and, you know, good, healthy meat that's been treated right and just free-ranged and um

08:37
grass-fed and and so we built a chicken coop. I went down to the mill here in town. We have a redwood cedar mill and bought a bunch of first cuts which is just the like a half round log with one flat side and so I bought like four big bundles of those hauled them on our flatbed here and and

09:06
pressure wash them and ripped them all down and built this chicken coop we have out of red cedar. And that was a really fun project that uh kind of got the online presence started. I was just doing all this work and I was like, you know, I

09:27
I want our homestead to not only generate good food and good things for our family, but I also, if it can, you know, provide a little bit of, uh you know, monetary money for our family. uh The whole goal for me is to

09:55
not be working full time and being able to have some more time with my kids as they grow and my wife and just just

10:07
That was another one of the reasons we moved out here is the cost of living is a little less than most places. And in the goal of all that, was hoping to set up the homestead so it can provide for our family in a way where we spend less money. And so we have to generate less money and I can have more time. So the whole goal in this thing is really ...