1KHO 695: Relearning What Ordinary People Used to Know | Staci and Jeremy Hill, The Preserver's Garden

Summary

---

The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast

Episode: 1KHO 695: Relearning What Ordinary People Used to Know
Guests: Staci and Jeremy Hill, The Preserver's Garden (Gooseberry Bridge Farm)
Host: Ginny Yurich
Date: January 30, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores the lost art of homegrown, home-preserved food and resilient, hands-on family living. Ginny Yurich is joined by Staci and Jeremy Hill of Gooseberry Bridge Farm, authors of The Preserver’s Garden, for an in-depth conversation about skills ordinary people used to know—like growing, preserving, and preparing food—as well as the joys and realities of raising a large family in touch with nature and the seasons. The Hills share their journey, practical tips, and the importance of passing down such knowledge to future generations.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Hills’ Journey: From Academia to Agrarian Life

• Background: Staci has a degree in history and anthropology, and did not grow up on a farm.
• Path to Farming: Staci’s historical interests focused on “how people lived and how they ate food, not just the wars and battles” (05:08).
• The family’s commitment began “about 15 years ago” with a mission: “I want to be somebody's grandma. I'm going to know how to do all the things” (05:18).

Lost Everyday Knowledge

• Skills Once Common: Growing food, preserving it, fixing things, working with the seasons.
• The Decline: “A lot of this stuff is a lost art. Our grandparents and great-grandparents did this because it’s how you lived, it’s how you ate.” —Jeremy (06:43)
• Modern Disconnect: The convenience of the grocery store makes self-sufficiency rare. “People are conditioned to only having two to five days worth of food in their house, which is crazy.” —Jeremy (08:05)

Pantry Criticism & Food Storage

• Addressing the misconception of “hoarding”: “We’re a family of eight. People don’t understand how much food they actually eat a year.” —Staci (07:34)
• The home pantry is the family’s own grocery store.

Raising Resilient Kids Through Involvement

• Kids’ Skills: The Hill children actively help with gardening, food prep, and preservation. “Our 7-year-old can walk through the garden and lead a tour… He can point out and tell people about different tomato varieties.” —Jeremy (12:04)
• Education Opportunities: “There’s a lesson in everything. You just have to look for it.” —Jeremy (12:53)
• Confidence Gains: Early exposure leads to life-long confidence: “When you have those roots inside of you, it comes out in a lot of different ways.” —Ginny (14:00)

Living Seasonally: The Ebb and Flow of Farm Life

• Seasonal Shifts: Winter brings rest and time indoors; summer is full of long workdays. This seasonal rhythm differs dramatically from “static” modern life (17:31).
• Food Waste is Minimal: Because of the hands-on effort growing and preserving, “food waste happens a lot less here than it does in other places” —Jeremy (15:16).

---

Deep Dive: Preservation Methods & the Freeze Dryer Revolution

Overview of Methods

• The book covers dehydration, salting, fermentation, freezing, water bath canning, pressure canning, and freeze drying (36:32).
• Variety & Practical Knowledge: The book details which methods suit which produce, how to maximize yields, and more.

The Game-Changer: Home Freeze Drying

• Introduction to Freeze Drying: Relatively new to home use; accessible for about 10-15 years.
• Major Benefits: “We couldn't can enough things for us… Freeze drying was a complete game changer.” —Staci (24:11)
• How It Works: The appliance removes water without heating the food, preserving flavor, nutrients, and texture.
• Examples: Freeze dried watermelon “tastes like cotton candy”; other foods like bone broth, kimchi, and even flowers can be preserved (27:13, 35:22, 39:17).
• Storage: Freeze dried foods go in airtight jars or bags and do not require further canning.
• Rehydration: Varies by food—some do better with hot water, some with cold (34:59).
• Cost vs. Savings: Machine costs $2,000-$5,000, but can be offset by food savings, selling freeze dried treats, or sharing machines (33:02–33:19).

Notable Quote:
“We believe there will be a time in the not so distant future when home freeze dryers will be as common as refrigerators and microwave ovens.” —The Hills, as quoted by Ginny (30:40)

Memorable Freeze Drying Moments

• “You can freeze dry watermelon… and it’s amazing. It’s like candy.” —Staci (27:13)
• Kids brought freeze dried food with them on trips for convenience and food allergy safety (34:07).

---

Managing Uncertainties: Weather, Pests, Preparedness

• Weather Threats: Hail, drought, and invasive pests can threaten crops; contingency plans are essential (47:53).
• Pantry as Security: Aim for two years of food storage to withstand disasters.
• Adapting Methods: “I grow twice as many plants as we need... so if something happens... I have some backups.” —Staci (48:33)
• Modern Challenges: New pest pressures due to invasive species—problems our ancestors didn’t face (50:28).

---

Passing on Knowledge & Homeschooling Wisdom

• Learning Sources: Books, YouTube, online research, trial and error (53:35).
• Teaching Kids: Children are encouraged to look up information, fostering independence.
• Homeschooling Experience: Oldest daughter homeschooled & now in college, finding classes less rigorous than her self-directed learning (“College is a scam.” —Staci’s daughter, 55:06).
• Life Skills: Farm-based, real-world skills and entrepreneurship are part of the family's educational philosophy.

---

Farm as Living Classroom & Community Resource

• Agri-Tourism: The Hills run a pick-your-own flower farm and welcome families to interact with farm animals (43:11).
• Flowers: Freeze drying and air drying flowers like sunflowers and zinnias—used for winter bouquets and wreaths (39:17–41:00).
• Soil Regeneration: Animal manure mixed with wasted hay builds soil over rocky Missouri ground (44:02).

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Modern Food Storage:
  “People are conditioned to only having two to five days worth of food in their house, which is crazy.” —Jeremy (08:05)
• On Skill Loss:
  “A lot of this stuff is a lost art. Our grandparents and great-grandparents did this because it’s how you lived, it’s how you ate.” —Jeremy (06:43)
• On Hands-On Learning:
  “When you have those roots inside of you, it comes out in a lot of different ways.” —Ginny (14:00)
• On Freeze Drying:
  “Freeze drying was a complete game changer... Now we actually can make enough food.” —Staci (24:11)
• On Memory and Nature:
  “God made nature as like a capsule for our memories... We really remember sensory experiences.” —Ginny (60:26)

---

Notable Timestamps

• [04:45] Staci describes her path from history to homesteading.
• [06:43] Jeremy on the disappearance of traditional food knowledge.
• [08:05] Why having only a few days’ food at home is unprecedented.
• [12:04] Involving children in food growing, preservation, and homeschool learning.
• [17:31] On living seasonally vs. modern static schedules.
• [24:11] Introduction of freeze drying as a practical solution.
• [27:13] Freeze dried watermelon and variety expansion.
• [30:40] Prediction on the future ubiquity of home freeze dryers.
• [39:17] Freeze drying flowers for color and beauty during winter.
• [44:02] Using animal manure and hay to build soil.
• [48:33] Planning for weather-related garden losses.
• [55:06] Staci's daughter’s skeptical perspective on college after homeschooling.
• [60:26] The power of nature to hold our deepest memories.

---

Tone & Takeaways

This episode’s tone is warm, encouraging, and practical, striking a hopeful chord for those seeking reconnection to past wisdom in today’s world. The Hills demonstrate that deep knowledge can be recovered and passed on, that living in rhythm with nature builds resilience, and that involving children in hands-on work pays dividends through confidence and capability. The practicalities of preservation—especially the freeze dryer—point listeners toward both new technology and time-tested tradition.

---

Connect with The Hills:
Instagram & online @ Gooseberry Bridge Farm
Their book: The Preserver’s Garden (available now)

---

Transcript

[Narrator/Poet]

Oh, it's a beautiful world Ain't nothing on screen that's ever gonna be this view oh, it's a beautiful world and I just want to share with I just want to share with you this beautiful world Such a beautiful.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Before we begin, I want to say thank you for being here, truly. The 1000 Hours Outside podcast only exists because of listeners like you who choose to press play. Today's episode is with Stacy and Jeremy Hill from Gooseberry Bridge Farm, and we're talking about how much of everyday knowledge has disappeared in just a few generations. There are all sorts of things ordinary people used to know.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

How to grow food, how to preserve.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

It, fix what breaks, make do, work with the seasons, and involve kids in real life in a way that forms them. This episode is about recovering the types of things that help make families resilient.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Especially if we feel like we've outsourced.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Just a bit too much. Quick note before we jump in. Our 1,000hours outside app sale ends tomorrow. It ends tomorrow and it's only 24.99 for one full year, which is just a little over $2 a month and families love it. It is designed to help you close your phone and build momentum with prioritizing real life living.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Now is the time to join.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

It is available on iOS and Android. You'll find links in the show notes. And one more thing. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the reviews. Like I've said, I read each and every one and they are so encouraging. This one came in earlier this week from Melissa and the title is My Favorite Podcast on Earth. She wrote I cannot say Enough Good Things about Ginny, her podcast and her 1000 hours app. I've been an active listener for the past six months and it has been a game changer for me as a mom with three kids five and under. Bless you, Alyssa. Jenny's encouraging and practical conversations with her guests have me nodding along and feeling less alone in this journey of motherhood. Her app has motivated me and my boys to get outside a little more each day, and she is a voice in my head when I second guess at my decision to homeschool for the first time. Thank you, Jenny, for all your heart and all the work you do to bring childhood back to its roots. Alyssa, thank you. I'm sending a big hello to you and your little ones. All right, let's get into today's conversation.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

If you're a parent, you know how hard it is to find drinks that are actually good for your kids. And honestly, for yourself too. I always read the label before I let my kids drink anything. And cure is one of those rare finds that checks every box. I've been trying Cure hydration packs for myself when I'm traveling, or even just first thing in the morning when I know I need to drink more water. They are plant based, have no added sugar, only 25 calories, and they actually hydrated better than water alone. It genuinely makes drinking enough water easier, which I know so many of us struggle with. Now let's talk about kids because this is where cure is doing cool stuff. My kids would sometimes ask for sugary sports drinks, especially after playing outside for hours. Switching to Cure Kids mixes changed everything. They're formulated with kids in mind, made with real ingredients, no added sugar, no artificial colors or dyes, and free from all the major allergens, from long outdoor play days to sports practices, or even when they're just not great at drinking water to cure kids helps replace the electrolytes they lose throughout the day so they can keep doing what kids are meant to do. Play, explore, and be kids. Staying hydrated isn't just about water. You also need electrolytes. That's why my family loves cure. It's clean, it tastes great, and kids actually ask for it. You can grab cure on Amazon or find a store near you@cure hydration.com outside. Real ingredients, real hydration ready for the whole family.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Ertz. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and there's a husband wife team here today which is really unique. I've actually only had this a couple times. They are farmers. They have a new book that just came out this week that we're recording. So huge congratulations on launch week. I know it's a busy week. It is called the Preserver's Garden. How to grow a garden for fermenting, canning, pickling, dehydrating, freeze drying and more. And also just including your children in this lifestyle. The authors and they are the founder of Gooseberry Bridge Farm, Jeremy and Stacy Hill. Welcome.

[Stacy Hill]

Hi.

[Jeremy Hill]

Thanks for having us.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

So this is like a quite the story because, Stacy, you didn't grow up on a farm.

[Stacy Hill]

Nope.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

And you're like, you've moved all over.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Right.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

You've been in Hawaii and in Missouri and in Florida and. And so, I mean, you have a degree in. In history and anthropology, so you say people regularly ask you what happened, what happened? So can we kick it off there?

[Stacy Hill]

I don't know. I may have played too much. Oregon Trail. Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

What happened to the point where you are the authors of such a comprehensive book and the book is really unique in the fact that it's just got all of your photos in it and there's so many photos and so you really get. You get a sense of being immersed in your world. So interesting to go from having this degree in history to this.

[Stacy Hill]

Yes, it is interesting. Yeah, it's. I mean, it's been like kind of a, like gradual thing, but also something I've always been interested in. Like, even as a kid I was interested in history and not the normal like wars and battles and stuff. It was how people lived and how they like ate food. I mean, it's, it's all. It was something that always just was interesting to me. So sometime like 15ish years ago, I decided we were going to get serious about this. And I'm like, I want to be somebody's grandma. I'm going to know how to do all the things. That was like my mindset starting about time we had our third baby and we were still like in town. That was like 2010is and we had a garden like all the time before that. But I wasn't like really doing much with it. But I mean, I started all the things. I was going to bake bread from scratch and all of that. All the stuff that's like homesteading movement now. And I didn't know that was a thing then, but I'm like, I want to do these things. And so I started doing them and. And somehow one thing led to another and here we are and we moved out here to get more, more lands. We lived in town and had like a backyard that was like a nice sledding hill, but not the best for gardening. So we did the community garden thing for a while and we did. Then we did some raised beds that were like, you know, taller on one side than the other, kind of almost terraced, but not quite. And we started growing things like more seriously back then, but it was still.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah, I remember the conversation that she brought up around that time frame and it was like, you know, someday we're going to be somebody's grandparents and we need to be able to teach them how to do things that we don't know how to do. And a lot of this stuff is a lost art. Our grandparents and great grandparents did this because it's how you lived, it's how you ate. So I mean, it's a lifestyle thing as much as it's a about. I mean, there's so many pros to. To, you know, growing and preserving your own food. There's monetary savings, there's healthier food, there's involving the kids. But no matter what reason you pick or a combination of reasons you pick, the fact is, I mean, it's a lost art. And people, everybody now, if you need food, you go to the grocery store. And it's not that we don't go to the grocery store, but we go less than we used to.

[Stacy Hill]

Right. And, well, and people see what a lot of the comments we get about our pantry on Instagram are about how much, like, why are you hoarding food? And like, we're not like this. We're a family of eight. People don't understand how much food they actually eat a year.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Well, that's interesting because no one would.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Ever say that about the grocery store.

[Stacy Hill]

Exactly.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

It looks like a grocery store.

[Stacy Hill]

You should share that. You should give it away and you have too much. I'm like, but we eat it all.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Like, right? That is your grocery store.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

People are conditioned to only having two to five days worth of food in their house, which is crazy. I mean, you go back a hundred years ago and told somebody that that's how we lived, they would freak out. That's just. That's not a. It's not sustainable in a non industrialized world, which, I mean, granted we live in, but.

[Stacy Hill]

But things can happen.

[Jeremy Hill]

Things can happen. And plus, a lot of those foods are packed full of preservatives and chemicals and who knows how they're grown and raised, so.

[Stacy Hill]

And they're traveling. The footprint of all of that.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

Food coming from far away. It's not local. I mean, if it's coming from outside of our house, that's got to be better.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah, it's kind of a shotgun thing. We're talking here because there's so many reasons. You kind of let us go see.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Right? I love seeing the base. I don't know, it's not like a basement or if it's your cellar or whatever it is. I'm like, it's so cool. There's jars everywhere and it's beautiful.

[Stacy Hill]

It's very pretty.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

All the different colors. Joel Salatin is a farmer I really like, and he talks about that like that. You know, they don't go really to the grocery store. They just, what's for dinner? They go to the cellar and they grab the things that were canned. We've had this cool experience. We live in Michigan, and near us in Dearborn, Michigan, there's this place called Greenfield Village, which Was I guess created or funded or something by Henry Ford. And it's basically like this historical village. You can go walk around. They've got like model T cars you can ride other than that. And there's horse and buggy. It's like a little bit stepping back in time. And they have this really cool thing where there's a couple of the homes there that are from specific timeframes. So like there's one that, it's called the Daggett House and it's from like the 18, sometime in the 1800s. And they basically have people that are reenacting that time period. So they're dressed and they have the home and they make lunch every day, every single day throughout the summer. And they are using what they would have had back then. So it's like, well, they had some cheeses and they had, you know, the asparagus just came up.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

But they can't eat all of it.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Because they have to save some. And it really is, it's the first time that I had a really good sense of kind of like what you're talking about. Like this is not hoarding. This is being very wise with what's available. That is not, you know, asparagus is going to grow for what, a couple weeks, right? And then that crop is done and then you're on to the next thing. So it's been really neat for us to see. And then they'll sit and they'll eat it and they've got, you know, they don't even have forks. It's like they have these different utensils and they have a, they have a wheel with like they're making their own fabric string, whatever. I said that wrong. Anyway, but this is how people used to live. And so you wrote in this book, it's called the Preserver's Garden, that general knowledge has changed that there were things that people knew that would, you know, all in common. People had not knowledge prior to probably the 1950s. And you say that over the last several decades the food preparation has become less widely practiced. And so then your only alternative is the convenience of store bought products. Talk about having six kids. And I think a lot of people would say that's a lot to juggle.

[Jeremy Hill]

Sure. And you know, juggling is an interesting word for it because another one of the comments that we get a lot is that we spend so much time on our food, like preparing food, growing food, harvesting food, preserving food, that it, it's a foreign concept to a lot of people because they're used to working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, come home, open a box. And dinner prep is something that takes minutes. And for us. Or they eat out, or they just eat out.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Right.

[Jeremy Hill]

And for us, dinner prep is something that can take hours and hours in a given day and that's okay.

[Stacy Hill]

And over the whole course of the year, we're doing it a little bit at a time. When we get to winter and we're eating off of the shelves, it's. The prep is minimal.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

Which is frustrating because that's winter when we're not busy.

[Jeremy Hill]

But the whole point I was going at on that was that it's a matter of, I guess just recognizing your priorities. Because when you are eating for convenience, you're working for somebody else and they're paying you money and you're trading that money for food. The way I like to look at it is that we're skipping the middleman and we are working for the food. It's just whose hours are you. Are you spending somebody else's or your own and involving the kids in that, you know, it's, it's really rewarding to see our, our now 7 year old can walk through garden and lead a tour and he can just point out and tell people, you know, this is this variety of tomato and it's better for this versus that one.

[Stacy Hill]

And, and then all the steps it takes to get that on the shelf. He. They can do all of that.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yes. So, you know, while it is juggling to some extent that goes right in with homeschooling because I mean we're not, I would say traditional homeschoolers, curriculum based. But when, when the kids go out into the garden and can do all these things and then we can. How many pounds and how many bushels and, and convert that into yields and how much salt it takes to do this. Yeah, there's a lesson in everything. You just have to look for it.

[Stacy Hill]

You can take. Our three younger kids are 12, 10 and 7. There's, there's some birthdays happening here. Yeah, he's almost 13.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Anyway, I get it.

[Stacy Hill]

The. But they can, the last two years even, they, they can take the, the bowl of tomatoes and go full process into. I don't let them like put it in the. They're too short to reach up there. But they could do it all themselves. They know, know how to do all of that.

[Jeremy Hill]

End up with a canned sharp sauce.

[Stacy Hill]

And, and, and they do. Can do applesauce also. They've been working on that and I mean just completely on their own and that's just because those are two things that we do a lot of. But.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

And that is an education. That is an education. And I say a lot. The things that you're exposed to when you're young, you feel you have a different level of confidence in doing them when you're older. Otherwise, you're shaky, and you're always shaky. You're always just a little bit like. But when you have those roots inside of you, it. It comes out in a lot of different ways. I love to talk about the seasonal living that you brought up, Stacy, because you. You kind of made a face. You're like, well, all the work's done and now it's winter. But it almost seems like this is the time for resting. It's different depending on where you live. You know, what would people have been doing? Like, they maybe would have been doing their sewing projects. They maybe would have slept a little bit longer. You know, just a time togetherness around a fire or a candle at dinner. So that's also a way that people don't live today. So, Jeremy, you brought up, you know, they work for somebody else and they buy their food, and you're. Instead of doing that, you're just working for your food. That allows you to be very in touch with the seasons. So can you talk about what that's like? Because I feel like it's probably been uncommon experience for.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

For most.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Of, you know, people who live in this industrialized world.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah, absolutely. And it's also. It puts you a lot more in touch with your food, too. I won't say everything.

[Stacy Hill]

It's just.

[Jeremy Hill]

I won't say food waste doesn't happen, but I. I can assure you food waste happens a lot less here than it does in other places. Because, you know, rather than just paying an extra dollar for that food. I worked for that.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

Like, you know, don't throw it away.

[Stacy Hill]

Nothing goes in the trash can. We have pigs and chickens. So, yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah. This book's all about produce. But, I mean, we do raise our own meat and, you know, a lot of different things beyond just produce. We had. We had to put a box around it.

[Stacy Hill]

But the seasonal thing.

[Jeremy Hill]

Sorry.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, so it's like, we do. The nice thing about winter is that it gets dark earlier and. And we don't have gardens. We. We don't grow anything over the winter because we just. It's better to just not just go doing that. Well, we do have all the animals still, so we still are, you know, have animal care and milking and the.

[Jeremy Hill]

An care Is harder in the winter because we're baking ice and doing all this.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Oh, that is so true. Isn't that interesting? Yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

So the animals need more and the garden needs less. And then we get forced to come inside earlier because it's time. It's dark at 5 o', clock, so we're gonna just go inside and then we have all that extra time to just be.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

In the summer, we are coming in at 9 o' clock at night and eating dinner at 11. So that's us. We. We feed the kids earlier.

[Jeremy Hill]

But I mean, that's our choice of how we do it. It's not for every but.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Right.

[Jeremy Hill]

You know, when I was talking about that earlier or when Stacy mentioned it, actually it was more along the lines of food prep. Actually takes less time for us in the winter because we're eating foods that we prepared. We put the work into in the summer. So, you know, I make a. I do most of the cooking and whenever, whenever I make a big thing of stir fried vegetables. It's just, it's on. It's every meal. Stir fried veggies. In the summer, we're chopping all the stuff and cooking it fresh. In this time of year, I'm going in the pantry, I'm popping a lid on a jar, adding some water and frying it. So it takes less time.

[Stacy Hill]

So because we're using freeze dried.

[Jeremy Hill]

Because we're using freeze dried veggies for.

[Stacy Hill]

Them rehydrate and cook them. They cook up like as if they were thawed frozen vegetables. So it's. Yeah, it's similar to that, but yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

So it gives you a little bit of time. There's an ebb and flow to it that's really different. Like, whereas everybody else's life is very static.

[Stacy Hill]

Right.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

You know, it's like I've got my 9 to 5, my 9 to 5, my 9- to 5. This is the day I run errands.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

This is the day I grocery shop.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

It's the same, right? Like January to December, but this gives a different ebb and flow. That's really interesting. I feel like the. We do a garden. We're not good at preserving. In fact, I'm. I don't think I've ever grown a tomato that we've actually eaten. I'm like, they get eaten by the bugs. I don't even know what's happening. I. We can grow cherry tomatoes. That's like thing sometimes there's some cucumbers. Only the flowers grow. So I'm not quite sure what we're doing wrong. But you know, to me, the winter.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Is a time for contemplation.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Like, what did I love? What would we do different next year? A time for really looking forward to, you know, the next season. It gives just a little bit of a break from it. So that's a really beautiful and impressive and unique thing that you do is living seasonally like that.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

The new year always feels like a reset for me. Not just for schedules and routines, but for our home too. I want our space to feel calm, functional and ready for the season ahead. Essentially the opposite of what it feels like over the holidays, with a stream of parties and gatherings, family visits that are fun and meaningful but also add to the craziness. And honestly, Wayfair makes that so easy. If you're refreshing bedding, upgrading towels, organizing kids rooms, or finally tackling storage, Wayfair really does have everything in one place. I love being able to shop for practical things like mattresses, bathroom storage and kitchen essentials, and add in those finishing touches that make a home feel cared for. This season I'm focusing on simple, cozy updates. We are refreshing bedding and adding a few accent pillows and mirrors to our living space. Nothing over the top, just pieces that feel warm, lived in and inviting. I was honestly surprised by how many styles and price points there were. It made it easy to stay on budget without sacrificing quality or style. And I love how convenient it is to find everything from kids room updates to work, from home setup to storage solutions for all the outdoor gear that somehow always piles up, get organized, refreshed and back on track this new year. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W A Y-F-A I R.com Wayfair Every style, every Home Some weeks I just don't have the time or the brain space for real meal planning. I want to eat healthier. I care about what we're putting in our bodies. But by dinner time, I am tired and overwhelmed. And that's where Hungry Root has been such a gift. I Hungry Root is basically like having a personal nutrition coach and grocery shopper rolled into one. I told them what we like, what we don't like, and what my health goals are. And they planned everything for me. The recipes, of which there are over 50,000, the groceries, all of it. And the more we use it, the smarter it gets, tailoring things even better to our tastes. I love that it makes healthy eating simple without overthinking it. Whether you're trying to eat cleaner, get more protein or reduce inflammation. Hungry Root does the work for you without junk ingredients and with high quality meats and seafood. And if you're trying to stick with healthier habits past January, which aren't we all, this really helps make it doable right now. Take advantage of this exclusive offer for a limited time get 40% off your first box plus get a free item in every box for life. Go to hungryroot.com 1000hours and use code 1000hours. That's hungryroot.com 1000hours code 1000hours to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life. As we step into a new year and yes, take those first steps outside to kick it off. I always feel this pull to simplify, to reach for pieces that feel good, layer well and actually last. And that's why I've been loving Quince. Quince makes those wardrobe staples you reach for again and again. I'm talking about their Mongolian cashmere sweaters that feel like designer pieces without the designer price, 100% silk tops and skirts that instantly dress things up, and denim that's cut just right for everyday life. Their Italian wool coats are a standout too. Beautifully tailored, soft and made to last for years, not just one season. You can feel the quality in the details, the stitching, the fit, the fabric. Everything is thoughtfully designed to become a true wardrobe essential. I can't tell you how much I'm loving my new cashmere sweater. It's getting so much wear already and it's holding up beautifully. I've even picked up a few Quince pieces for home and travel and the quality has been just as impressive. And the best part? Quince uses premium materials from ethical, trusted factories and prices everything far below traditional luxury brands. Quince is a big hit around here and I know you'll love what they have to offer as well. So refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com outside for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com outside to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com outside I'd love to talk about the freeze drawing because you go through this book.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

So the book is a beautiful book. It's filled with wonderful pictures and just so much explanation. So you go through all the different vegetables and herbs and things that you can grow. There's cucumbers and celery and onions. You got all the information in there.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

About how to do it.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

What are some of the best varieties. And you talk about how to preserve.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Them, how to maximize yields.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Everything you need to know is in there. But one of the things you talk about is freeze drying. And I guess I. My one friend has a freeze dryer. My friend Brittany has one, but I'd actually never even heard of that. But I think she would be like, honest.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

She's so good at it.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

She's got like a basement like you with all the beautiful cans. And my kids are just like obsessed. They're like, we want to be like her when we're older. I think she freeze dried soup, like you put it in a tray and then you're just like breaking it up.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yep.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Can you.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, we freeze dry bone broth too. It's. Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Can you expect. I had never heard because it's like, okay, there's freezing and there's dehydrating. Like, but if you combine this freeze drying, it's a whole different thing. So you say it's gone mainstream, but I had never heard of it until I saw it at my friend Brittany's house last year. So can you talk about. I think most people would know a fermentation. They know you can freeze things. They know you can can things. There's a couple different kinds of canning. And all the information is in the book. It goes by season. The book is called the Preserver's Garden. But can you talk about the freeze drying in particular?

[Jeremy Hill]

So when we're talking about freeze drying, it is a appliance. So we've purchased an appliance that does this for us. We actually have two of them now because we use it so heavily in the summer. We've got two of them running all, all the time.

[Stacy Hill]

They're actually running now.

[Jeremy Hill]

They're actually running now, yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Are they newish?

[Jeremy Hill]

They've been on the market in the personal space where people can just buy them at a reasonable price for probably 10, 10 to 15 years.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah. So that is pretty new.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, we, we got ours in 20. 21.

[Jeremy Hill]

20 or 21 21.

[Stacy Hill]

Early 21, like January. So we had it for that whole garden season and it was a complete game changer. Like it, that's what like launched this whole. We can actually make enough food because we couldn't can enough things for us. And, and dehydrating is not as like dehydrating is good for herbs and a few other things, but it, it can, it's not the same like if you, if you dehydrate green beans, you've gotta like cook them like for hours and hours in a lot of water and they come out mushy. Green beans like come out similar to canned ones.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

But can you explain why canning.

[Jeremy Hill]

So when you can something, you're. When you. So many things, when you're preserving food, there, there are basically two goals that you're trying to accom. First goal is to remove and inhibit the ability for bacteria to grow because bacteria is what destroys your food. When you are canning food, you're doing that with heat. So you're cooking the food. You're intensely kicking cooking the food and then putting it in an environment, I. E. That jar with a sealed lid where bacteria doesn't exist because of the heat you just created. And it's.

[Stacy Hill]

Fish are canning.

[Jeremy Hill]

Pressure canning just.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, water bath canning is the same.

[Jeremy Hill]

We're going 100,000ft here.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

So. But your goal is.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

No, sorry.

I know, but can you say why water bath? Because I actually, I'm glad you brought that up because I would have thought. Well, you boil it. So I would have thought that water bath canning was the heat.

[Stacy Hill]

No, water bath canning is the acid in the food.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Okay.

[Stacy Hill]

It's the level of acidity in the food is what keeps it safe. The, the, the heat, the heat is. Seals your jar, sealing your jar and there's sterilization involved. If you boil it for over 10 minutes, then the outside of the jar is clean, but you're not boiling it so much that the inside of the food is boiled.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Okay. I'm glad you explained it. So what's saving the food is acidity.

[Stacy Hill]

For water bath canning and heat for pressure canning.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Okay. What were you going to say? Jeremy though there was one other thing.

[Jeremy Hill]

Well, in this, some foods you have to pressure can, like green beans because you can't make them acidic enough to.

[Stacy Hill]

Unless you can them in vinegar, which is a whole nother situation. Just nasty. Pickled green beans. Some people like it.

[Jeremy Hill]

That's it. If you're into that.

[Stacy Hill]

Sorry, you don't want to. I mean, lots of people do pickle a lot of things because it's easy and it's safe. But like, how many pickles can you eat? Yeah, I like pickled everything.

[Jeremy Hill]

Which brings you back to freeze drying and why it's such a. Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Which is the one last question which is you sure. And you said it kind of briefly. You're like, we can't. You said the freeze dryer was a game changer because we couldn't can enough, right?

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah. And some of the foods you don't like and we're like just not good to eat or it's not something that we enjoy eating because they're mushy or.

[Stacy Hill]

They'Re salty or they're like there's just.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Situation and you couldn't can enough. Why? Because of space? Because of time.

[Stacy Hill]

Because variety, mainly varieties of it was the, the foods would have been limited.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Okay.

[Stacy Hill]

Like you can't can watermelon. We can freeze dry watermelon.

[Jeremy Hill]

Oh, and it's amazing.

[Stacy Hill]

And cantaloupe and it's like candy.

[Jeremy Hill]

It's like cotton candy.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

So interesting to me because I've thought, okay, so we have tried to grow melons. We're. We're so bad. I'm like, we'll get like two, you know, but they're huge. And I have thought before, if all of these did grow and it worked, it's kind of weird because I'm like, well, we would have 16 of these massive. Like we have one called Carolina Cross or I don't know, so big. It's a biggest watermelon I'd ever seen. I'm like, what would we do with these? Because they all ripen pretty much around the same time and they're so big. So you can. Okay, all right.

[Stacy Hill]

Freeze dry watermelon. You can also do some other things with watermelon. You can make fruit leather with it and that's dehydrated, so that's watermelon. You can make watermelon jam and you can make watermelon lemonade concentrate and can.

[Jeremy Hill]

That which we do all the things.

[Stacy Hill]

So that was my watermelon things.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

You have learned so many things. You are going to be someone's grandma and they are going to know how to do everything with watermelon. I've never even heard of watermelon jam.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, it tastes like summer. It's weird sometimes. But we also have watermelon syrup in there and you can add that to like drinks or oatmeal, whatever. Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Wow.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Okay.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

So a couple years ago, you hop on this freeze drying train. Was it like. Because the one my friend has is like relatively expensive. It's not. I mean, I'm sure that the cost evens out over the time that you use in. It evens out because it's. It, it's providing your food. But like, was it a hemming and hawing? Like, are we gonna get it? Are we not gonna get it?

[Stacy Hill]

I. I thought that we were never gonna use that enough to. To justify the cost. And his mom was pushing us like, oh, you'll use it, you should get it. And she actually helped us with the first one because we were.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

And now it was such a game changer that you've bought a second, right?

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah. It. So when she talked about time. Time when you, when you're canning foods, you're generally canning them out of the field for. Out of the garden.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

So you've got a very narrow window.

[Stacy Hill]

Yes.

[Jeremy Hill]

And. And it's time intensive. You're standing over a stove.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

And you kind of got a babysitter.

[Jeremy Hill]

You can't do other things while you're doing it. With a freeze dryer, your goal isn't to kill all that bacteria and heat, heat, treat it. You're removing the moisture, which is the other primary method for preservation. Preservation, which we talk about in the book quite a bit. It's kind of the next step above dehydration because dehydration is all about removing moisture. Moisture is the conduit or the. The whatever medium in which your bacteria grows.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

So in freeze drying, you just put the food in it and it goes through the whole cycle on its own. And it can take eight hours to two days, depending on how you have.

[Stacy Hill]

To put up the food. But you don't. Yeah. And we can also cut things, prep them and put them on trays in the freezer. Because you can pre freeze your food before you freeze dry it. So it gives you another way to catch up. Like when we just had the one freeze dryer, we were filling an entire deep freeze with trays of food and then moving them to the freeze dryer as we had time. Because it takes.

[Jeremy Hill]

There was a backlog.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, it was a backlog. But now that we have the two, we can kind of go back and forth and, and keep up. Because we were running out of freezer space to prep the stuff for the freeze dryer. It was the whole thing.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

So it really is something that is. Revolutionized things you wrote in the book.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

We believe there will be a time.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

In the not so distant future when home freeze dryers will be as common as refrigerators and microwave ovens. So. So when it comes out. Because I. I really don't know much. I'm like. My friend was like, I pour my soup in there. I'm like, what is there a lip on the tray? Like, what's happening when it's done? You said it could take eight hours.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

It could take two days.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

You know, in the pictures that you show in the book, which pictures are so great because they're just so like everyday family things. You got strawberries, you have okra, and you have beans. It looks like when they come out. Are they.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

What are they?

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Like, just dried?

[Stacy Hill]

They're like Styrofoam version, but they feel like.

[Jeremy Hill]

So you've had astronaut ice cream or seen it before? The astronaut food. That's really all it is. It's just freeze dried. You can freeze dry your own ice cream cream.

[Stacy Hill]

And you use dry milk.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

And then you put it in a jar.

[Stacy Hill]

Or you can put it in a mylar bag.

[Jeremy Hill]

Or Mylar bags.

[Stacy Hill]

Just. It's easier.

[Jeremy Hill]

It needs to be airtight.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Okay. And then you put the lid on, and that does not have to be canned at that point. It's good to go. Okay. And then my friend Brittany says you just add water.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah. If you want it rehydrated.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah. With stuff like the watermelon, we would.

[Jeremy Hill]

Just eat a crunchy treat.

[Stacy Hill]

It's a snack. Yeah. Oh, it's just like. It's like cotton candy, but it's fruit.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Wow.

[Stacy Hill]

The watermelon. Watermelon's really fluffy.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

And the seeds get like crunchy in a way where you can just eat them so you don't have to worry about taking the seeds out.

[Jeremy Hill]

But the, the whole thing about the freeze dryer is it's removing all of the water, all of the liquid, every last bit. And it's not. I shouldn't say it's removing the liquid. It's removing the water. So think about watermelon juice. You know, watermelon is just basically this spongy thing. Juice holder. It removes all of that juice. So all you have is the spongy. But it, it doesn't remove the juice. It removes the water and all the flavor stays. So you've got a hundred percent of that flavor.

[Stacy Hill]

It intensifies.

[Jeremy Hill]

Really intense.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Was it like, like, it was like full of surprises. You're like, you get this thing and you're like, what can we put in there?

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

Well, a lot of people will get one. You know, you're to get into one, you're looking at 2 to $5,000 of cost. So, I mean, they're not inexpensive, but you can justify that with what you're putting on your shelf. If you can't, a lot of people start a little side hustle. You can freeze dry candy and you see all these people selling freeze dried skittles.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

I mean, it's so easy.

[Jeremy Hill]

It's so easy. And you can sell them and people Buy them.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

And you can offset the cost. So there's.

[Stacy Hill]

You can also split it with somebody.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

That's what I was thinking.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, rent out trays, like have somebody, you know, pay you to, to use the freeze dryer.

[Jeremy Hill]

But as the cost comes down on it, you know, I think, I do think most people are going to have one at some point.

[Stacy Hill]

You know, you can put leftovers in them, especially the smaller models that. Because ours we have the bigger ones, we have a large and extra large. So they take up a lot of space and a lot of electricity. But in addition to holding less, but they're easier to fill. So like you could take your leftovers for the week and put them in there and then you have, have those foods for later. It's. Yeah, it's like putting them in the freezer, but they're also easier to use and you can take them places. It's great for camping or traveling. We went to North Carolina a couple weeks ago and stayed in a cabin and we brought all of our food which, and a lot of it was freeze dried. We have food allergies too, so that's part of why we did that. But in the back of the van.

[Jeremy Hill]

And yeah, it saves a lot of money and you don't have to worry about, you know, contaminations with allergens.

[Stacy Hill]

Trip. We did like our freeze dried veggies that we eat normally. We did some where we cooked them and then freeze dried them. Then you can just pour a little hot water in there and stir it up and it's ready to eat. Like there's no like a miracle seasoned. It's just like instant food.

[Jeremy Hill]

Or you can take those freeze dried chips of green beans and, and summer squash and all these things and dip them in hummus and it's chips and chips and dips.

[Stacy Hill]

And we did a lot of freeze dried fruit for that trip too. Like instead of, you know, packaged fruit snacks, we had little, little bags of apples and watermelon for the kids.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

So you see the only things you can't do are chocolate, honey and oil. But that most of your garden produce you have tried in the freeze dryer and it's been a success. That's like a fun adventure.

[Stacy Hill]

Oh yeah, yeah. And then figuring out how to rehydrate it is a whole nother situation because some things do better with cold water and some things do better with hot water and there are boiling water. There are some books out there that I've looked at and I. We didn't see the books until after we figured all of this out for ourselves. So now I'm just like, no, they're wrong. Like there's a better way. Yeah, we.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Okay, we spent a lot of time on this, but actually I think that most people probably don't know about it. And you can learn a ton about it from the book. You say we also love to freeze dry, unconventional snacks like kimchi. I mean, wow. You know, like you wouldn't even know. You wouldn't even think.

[Stacy Hill]

And the fermented pickles, the wow. We. Because they don't last forever in a jar. Like, yeah, vinegar pickled foods, they're lacto.

[Jeremy Hill]

And in the book we get into the kind of how it works. We go through the steps of how a freeze dryer does what it does. But the best, the biggest thing about it is it doesn't cook the food. It never gets above it.

[Stacy Hill]

Depends on what you're.

[Jeremy Hill]

You can set the cycle, but it doesn't have to get above a hundred degrees.

[Stacy Hill]

You can turn it down to where it keeps it completely raw.

[Jeremy Hill]

So you're not cooking foods.

[Stacy Hill]

If you're doing something with probiotics in it, you would turn that temperature down. Well, there's no knob but buttons. And I keep doing this, but raw.

[Jeremy Hill]

Milk, you know, you, if you milk your cow, put your milk in there, when it comes out and you rehydrate it, it's still raw milk. It doesn't pasteurize it like canning would. Not that you can, but you can.

[Stacy Hill]

It's rebel canning. Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Oh, wow. Okay. So the book has all the information in how to preserve. So there's dehydration, salting, fermentation, freezing water bath canning, pressure canning, and freeze drying. So all of that is in the book. And you can pick what works for you. I mean, I learned a lot with just that part.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

January always feels like a fresh start in our homeschool. It's that reset moment after the holidays where you're refining what worked, letting go of what didn't, and finding your rhythm again. Oh, and also you actually know what day it is again in. As opposed to being in that holiday induced fog where time and space seem to just meld into nothing and everything all at once. One thing we've learned over the years is how important it is to meet each child exactly where they are. That's why IXL fits so naturally into our homeschool life. It adapts to each learner so one child can review last year's skills while another jumps ahead without pressure, comparison or busy work. I love how effortless it is as a parent, everything is organized by grade and by topic. So I'm not digging through resources or reinventing the wheel. And the real time feedback is huge. Kids learn from mistakes immediately and the progress reports give clarity and confidence. As a guide, IXL covers math, language arts, science and social studies from pre K all the way through 12th grade. And it grows right along with your child. It is flexible, proven and trusted by millions of families. Make an impact in your child's learning. Get IXL now and 1000 Hours Outside listeners can get an exclusive 20 off their IXL membership when they sign up today at www.ixl.com 1000hours. Visit ixl.com 1000hours to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Then you go through. I mean, was this just like, was it easy or hard to go through? I mean, you went through basically like every single vegetable. It was garlic, carrots, sweet potatoes, potato. Like, did you like it that or was that overwhelming to you?

[Narrator/Poet]

You.

[Stacy Hill]

It took a long time. Okay. The whole book writing process would, would qualify as overwhelming. Sure. It's like decide to share something and then you're like, oh, let me just inside out my brain and put it on paper. Yeah, that's. That was a lot.

[Jeremy Hill]

Writing it together helped.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

I mean being.

[Stacy Hill]

If I could take a break and be like, you're doing this now.

[Jeremy Hill]

The way we wrote a lot of this is that she came up with the kind of the outline and the first draft and then I turned it into sentences and paragraphs.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

You're gonna do winter squash and I'll do green beans. Okay. So you talk about mint. Mint is a plant that any gardener can make any gardener feel successful. So like I said, you go through the best vegetable varieties for preserving. You go through herbs. One of the other things not to stick on the freeze drying is that you can freeze dry flour flowers.

[Stacy Hill]

Yep. Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Okay. This wreath, this wreath is so pretty. This is on page 183. I was like, this is such a gorgeous photo. It's like a wreath with sunflowers in it.

[Stacy Hill]

Okay, are those freeze dried, freeze dried sunflowers? So it's magical, right? And I figured that out by process of eliminate. Like, okay, so the, the flowers. There was nothing, no information about this back when I did it. People were like, oh look, you can freeze dry flowers, but the petals puff up when you freeze dry them. Normally if you just like throw them in there, they have to be soaked in water first, which is weird because you're drying them, but they freeze before they dry. And something about them being covered in water and fully saturated when they freeze makes them dry looking like that. And I have a couple YouTube videos that show exactly how I do that if anybody is interested. But.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Wow.

[Stacy Hill]

But I figured it out because it pretty.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Stacey, you figured it out because it.

[Stacy Hill]

Was rained and then I cut all the flowers right before rain. I'm like, wow, these came out perfect. Or right after it rained. Number but. But they were all really wet and I started soaking them.

[Jeremy Hill]

And it should be pointed out too that we.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

Part of the way that we're able to do what we do and do this full time is that we do agritourism as part of our. As our home business. So we, we pick flower farm. We do. We let people come out and play with our farm babies. So, you know, it's not just. We're not just gardening 24, 7, 365.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah. Yeah. We. I love that we have like, like, I don't know, a quarter acre or so of flowers that we grow. So that's probably like, let's preserve them too.

[Jeremy Hill]

At any given point in the summer, we've got 25 to 30, 000 plants in the ground of just flowers and people are coming out to pick their own. So when we have excess flowers out there, she's picking them.

[Stacy Hill]

We have a whole building just for dried.

[Jeremy Hill]

It's just full of dried flowers.

[Stacy Hill]

And they're not all freeze dried. It's sunflowers and zinnias that we freeze dry and everything else is mostly hung dried and like a more traditional bundle than hanging.

[Jeremy Hill]

And then here in, you know, the winter time, we're at farmers markets and we're selling dried bouquets and wreaths and things like that.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

The wreath is stunning. It's so pretty. And I saw that has a little tag on it. So it looks like obviously something that you could sell. And in the middle of the winter, if you live in the north and there's snow, snow everywhere. Like someone was just talking to me about the. The healing power of color and flowers in general. Yeah, sure. And in the winter, the only color is red. There's like the berries and the cardinals. Like that's it. Pretty much.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

And you don't even see that all the time. So I just was so drawn. I mean, we're covered in snow here in Michigan right now, so I'm like, this is so pretty with these sunflowers. So I want to read it. I mean there's so much to learn here. Here we've done Extensive experimentation with freeze drying flowers in the. As in sunflowers, our favorite. But any flower that can be hung dry can also be freeze dried. You'll get a much brighter color than with air drying and no additional steps are needed. So you talk about soaking them or getting them, harvesting them just after a good rain. It's really cool because I mean, sometimes it's so important to. To cut them. Right. Because then more grow, Right?

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah. You have to keep cutting them where you don't get more flowers.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

So then you have something to do with them. Wow.

[Stacy Hill]

And you can enjoy them all winter or have an entire building full of them that you're just like, oh, great.

[Jeremy Hill]

Now I have that we can barely walk through.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah. It's like the flower version of the pantry.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Oh, wow.

[Stacy Hill]

And then we do a lot of medicinal flowers too. So they're like calendula or calendula and.

[Jeremy Hill]

Humphrey and Comfrey's not. Well, not a flowers.

[Stacy Hill]

But chamomile. I do a lot of chamomile, which we usually I freeze dried the chamomile and air dried it. And usually I just air dry it because it doesn't seem that different. And once you're making tea out of it, it tastes the same.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

You really have learned a tremendous amount. It's very encouraging because it's like, well, someone else could start and they could learn so much as well. Okay. So we talked a lot about the freeze drying, which is really cool because I didn't know anything about it. So I'm really thankful to learn about that. I love that there's this layered piece where people can come to the farm and they can interact with the animal babies. It's so good for kids and just such a thrill for them. There's all these layered benefits though, because you're talking about an agro. Tourism is my favorite thing to do outside. I also like being on. On the water. But like, I also really like agrotourism. I just think that. And there's so many varieties. Like you can go pick blueberries or you can go play the animals, whatever. But along with having the opportunity for people to come and interact with your animals, you also use their poop. Okay. Talk about the unsung heroes of the farm.

[Jeremy Hill]

Go ahead.

[Stacy Hill]

The. The poop. So I mean, goats waste a lot of hay. They poop all over it while they're wasting it. So because they just drop it, they pick it up out of the hay feeder and. And drop it on the ground and then it's gross and they won't Eat it because. Because that's goats for you. So we have a lot of goats. So we have a lot of this hay that ends up on the ground, and they poop in it. And then we shovel all that out and put it on our gardens like it's. And then we also have. Yeah. The hay and the manure are all mixed together, and it. You put it on really thick, like 8 to 12 inches.

[Jeremy Hill]

Wow.

[Stacy Hill]

And it. If you do that in December, January is the absolute latest, really, for like, a May garden, because you wanted to have, like, several months. Wants to sit there and it'll break down because the. The microbes, organisms, and all that are being fed by the manure and the hay and the organic matter, and they break it all down. You end up with a whole lot of earthworms and really nice soil under there. And, I mean, we have. We're in Missouri, so we're in our area. Most people will be like, yeah, we don't grow in the ground because it's all rocks. But we had no other option because I couldn't grow on this scale and bring in compost and stuff, so it would be too expensive. So we started doing this thick hay and letting it break down, and that built the soil above the rocks so that we were able to plant into the ground. It's just. And couldn't have done it without all the animals.

[Jeremy Hill]

But in. In Missouri, we have. In southern Missouri, at least.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah. Rocks.

[Jeremy Hill]

That's all we have.

[Stacy Hill]

Rocks. Lots of rocks.

[Jeremy Hill]

And when we plant our tomatoes, they're.

[Stacy Hill]

Not, like, small rocks.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah, when we plant the tomatoes.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah. And yeah, when we dig holes for, like, single plants, like, tomatoes are like a, you know, bigger hole. Dig the hole a little bit extra, dump the rabbit poop in the bottom, put the plant in, and then you. You're. It's all right there.

[Jeremy Hill]

When those plant roots start to grow, they go down and they hit that rabbit poop. And.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

I learned from this woman named Lara Cox, who I called Laura for an entire podcast episode, but actually it was Lara. So that's embarrassing. But I learned that rabbit poop is col gross. And I didn't know, like, you can just throw it in.

[Stacy Hill]

Yep. And so is goat and sheep and alpaca, I think.

[Jeremy Hill]

I don't have any alpacas about. Any animal that poops in a pellet is safe. Oh, it's cold.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Pellets are safe. Okay. Oh, so great. Did you see that documentary called Back to Eden?

[Stacy Hill]

I have heard of it, but I know.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Okay, that's kind of what they talk about. And, like, they'll show gardens that are, like, complete. There's, like, so much rock.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Rock.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

But if you bring in, like, organic material, it composts down. And like, eventually you've got soil and you have things that have more water content because the. Whatever's on top of the soil is holding in that moisture.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, it helps so much. Yeah, yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

And it was fascinating.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

It's like they related to the Bible.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

It's like, one of the best things I've ever seen. I was like, jaw dropped by it. It's like all the forgiveness in the land. And when you think, like, there's nothing that you can do, that there's these ways out and. Anyway, okay, so let's talk about a couple of the other nitty gritty things. This is a big one. Weather preparedness. So we've gotten hail. And you had a picture in here about. With a piece of hail next to a coin. And also. Okay, have you heard this? This might make me sound like a kook, but I just read about it, that they're dropping vaccines from planes.

[Stacy Hill]

I've seen something about that.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm like, you know, there's stuff coming from the sky. It might be hail. It might be a rabies vaccine.

[Stacy Hill]

I don't know if that's true or not. Yeah, yeah. I've seen posts about that. Like, not in our state. So we're.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah, but, you know, there's also flooding and there's wind and there's things that happen. And. And I mean, that's a really tricky part.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

I.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

That's something that definitely freaks me out a little bit. Like, okay, here's an example. So we've got a garden.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Our neighbor's got cows. Well, the cow's got things through the fence.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

And I was like, they didn't come stomp on my garden, but they could have. So there's kind of a lot to be afraid of.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah. And that's one of the reasons we've expanded our pantry four times, added more shelving, because, you know, we just did it in baby steps. The first time we put shelves in there, it was like, okay, let's have some food on the shelves. Well, let's try to have a whole season's worth of food. Now our benchmark is to try to have two years worth of food. Because.

[Stacy Hill]

So if something happens, if we get.

[Jeremy Hill]

That hailstorm storm in May when everything's planted and it destroys everything, which we did.

[Stacy Hill]

Well, that picture is from our May hail. But we had like a hail storm the day we were planting everything. And I mean. But part of the reason it was okay is because like I grow twice as many plants as we need too. Because then we plant the garden and then I hold on to those for several more weeks and kind of give them away a little bit at a time. But like if I'm growing them all, I might as well have some backups. And then the other thing you can do is like with your tomato plants, they grow little suckers, little side branches. Like you can take. Take those off when the plants are young and root them and then you have another tomato plant. So if something happens to the one one year growing, like you don't. You're not out the whole season. You can, you could replant it. And I just, I try to like little things like that just to safeguard our. Because I don't want to be, you know, growing all these plants from March to May. And then I put them in the ground and they're instantly destroyed by one storm. Which. That hailstorm we had, it actually made me feel better because it was like nickel size. Hails wasn't like massive, but there was a lot.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

I think we had it too. We had to get our. We had to get our re. Re roofed. Yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

It was enough to damage things. But so many of the plants survived and just lost a few branches and came back and. And they like my cabbage looked pretty bad.

[Jeremy Hill]

It could have been worse.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah. But it, it didn't completely destroy. Was nice to know it could handle a little bit.

[Jeremy Hill]

Inhale is just one thing. Drought. Drought is a huge one because not only does it hurt your plants, but when you water your plants in a drought, all of the bugs within a square number of square miles are going to see your garden as the Garden of Eden and they're going to come.

[Stacy Hill]

In and kill everything after everybody around us cuts their hay fields. And then the bugs have nowhere else to go, so they all come visit our flowers.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

I wouldn't have thought of that.

[Narrator/Poet]

There's a lot.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

You're kind of up against a lot. You got to be real resilient.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah. And it's good to remember too, because this always used to bother me that, that the, the people that grew things like when we're thinking back in history and all that 100 years ago, 150 years ago, they didn't have the same pest pressure we have now with the globalization and all of that. Like we have. Have all these invasive insects that aren't.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Supposed to be where Japanese beetles and that are stronger. Right. Because they're like. They're.

[Stacy Hill]

There's.

[Jeremy Hill]

They don't have natural enemies.

[Stacy Hill]

They don't have predators. They all. They. They can take over the native stuff and. And the beneficials. And it's just. It's a lot like, you wonder, like, how did those people grow all their own food? Well, they weren't dealing with all the things we're dealing with.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah, that's one of the things.

[Stacy Hill]

A little. Yeah, exactly.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Or data centers that are sucking up all the water.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

I don't know.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

That might. I don't know if that's a thing either, but I'm reading about it.

[Stacy Hill]

It is. Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

I'm seeing it, too. And I'm like, what is this? You know, there. There's one. We live near a city called Saline, or near Ann Arbor, Michigan. And there's a city called Celine. And there's like, everyone is up in.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Arms about this data center.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Well, then they what? There's like, they want one in Kalkaska, Michigan, too. And everyone's up in arms in Kalkaska. And I'm like. And you keep seeing it in the rural areas that they're taking these huge pieces of land for these data centers. And also the solar fields, like the. You know, you'll drive by and it'll.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Be like solar panels.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Like, there's 200,000 of them. And I'm like, okay, why do we need so many data centers? What is happening? My mind rolls away a little bit because I'm like, everything seems fine. So why would we need, like, like, all of these data centers? All of a sudden they're, like, wanting to put them all over the place. So anyway, that makes me, like, slightly concerned about the water. But then some people say it's recooled. I don't know enough.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

Before we did this and I quit my day job, I was in it, so don't get me started.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Okay. Yes. All right. But if you do know any insider information, just let me know.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Okay.

[Jeremy Hill]

Stuff, though, is huge. And it's gonna. It's gonna get worse and worse because all that stuff that you're seeing is to power the. Those back AI back ends, and they're just going to get bigger and bigger. We're just seeing the very beginning of that.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah. Yes. That's something that actually I'm super interested in and trying to keep in the know about just because of the ramifications of it and how we raise our kids. But I think anything that preserves your Humanity and anything that is tied to like in, in the ground, in person, hands on activity has got a little bit of a safety buffer.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yep.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

So that's why all these things are important. Okay, so then talking about passing on knowledge, you clearly have learned a tremendous amount. So the fact that you didn't grow up on a farm and you have put out this book, you're an experimenter too, which you can tell, right? You're like, oh well, let's. What happens when we put this in there? You know, like that's a really cool quality. And you can tell that you value that. What has inspired you, you like are. How do you learn? Are you learning from books? Are you learning from YouTube? Are you learning from trial and error?

[Jeremy Hill]

Yes.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, all of it. Is there, is there lesser on the books? Because books take up space and we have a small house.

[Jeremy Hill]

But we wrote a book, so please.

[Stacy Hill]

Buy our book, make our book, take up space. But I mean I appreciate books. I just like, there's no space.

[Jeremy Hill]

We're a family of eight in a 2,300 square foot farmhouse.

[Stacy Hill]

We set up for this. But yeah, we've, I mean, and like YouTube, like the Internet in general, we've just been like, I want to do this. How is that done? And then find somebody or some. Somewhere to learn it. It's just look it up. And I've always said to my history degree was really a degree in research. So yeah, that's what, that's what they really teach you. So.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Jeremy Hill]

And that's the driving point is how to pass that on to the kids.

[Stacy Hill]

And so. Well, and I have them looks of it, they want to know how to do something. I'm like, here you go, look, look it up. You have, you have access to the Internet and supervised. But they can, you know, they can look things up and figure it out and yeah, problem solve.

[Jeremy Hill]

We want them to, but they're. Our kids are going to come into their own with an institutional base of knowledge that their peers aren't going to have and that we didn't have.

[Stacy Hill]

And trying to convince them that that's good is always fun. Fun. Sure. They get to be teenagers and they're like, we're missing out. I'm like, no, you're not. Our oldest is in college now and she's like, college is a scam. Like, she's just like, this is, this is ridiculous.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Tell us more about that.

[Stacy Hill]

Well, she just started this semester and she, she is completely homeschooled from, from the beginning.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

And, and mostly Unschooled, if you want to go by. By definitions. But. And she did, like, most of her high school work completely on her own. Just like, she picked her classes. She researched like, she did it. I just went like, yep, that looks good. Go. Which is nice because our state allows that. And then she decided she wanted to. She also has a bakery business, so she started her own business. Which part of why we started all of the farm business, the agritourism, the. All of that was when she started high school. We wanted to start a business as part of her curriculum. We're like, we're gonna do this, and we're all gonna do it together. And she took that, like, two years in and started her own business. So she does that now she's going to school for hospitality and restaurant management to try to do more with that. But she just keeps. Like. She's like, this is dumb. They aren't really teaching us anything. So I'm like, okay, well, maybe I. Maybe I went too far with this. But I'm like, it's so good.

[Jeremy Hill]

She's definitely approaching everything very skeptically.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Because she actually did it. Like, she already knows how to be hospitable, and she already. Yeah.

[Stacy Hill]

And she goes and takes a class, and she's like, it's an open book exam. This is dumb. Like, I can't even learn this stuff. Because she has to. She has to cite all of her sources from the book during.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

It's like at a. Jumping.

[Stacy Hill]

Very different.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

We are doing dual enrollment this year, and with our oldest is in 12th grade, and he's doing some college classes online. And we're sort of similar. Like, I'm like, if you would take the whole base of knowledge that kids are supposed to be exposed to In K to 12, I'm like, We didn't do 100 of that pie. You know, we did a lot of our own things. And then you're like, do or die time. Like, is he gonna survive? And then he's just getting A's in these college classes.

[Stacy Hill]

It didn't matter.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Like, it did not matter.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah, well.

[Jeremy Hill]

And she's saying that she's sitting there listening to a lecture and taking notes and looks to her left and to her right, and there are kids. Kids going, like, asleep.

[Stacy Hill]

We're watching Netflix.

[Jeremy Hill]

Netflix on their laptop. And then complaining. This is so hard.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah. Yeah. She's like, all the. All the public school kids she's talked to, she's just like. Like, this is.

[Jeremy Hill]

They're burned out.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

And they're not Absorbing any of this.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Yeah, it's so interesting. What a, what an inspiring story that you can learn a lot. That really the other thing I've gotten from you is that you have some. And you talk about about this in the book. You have some deep whys. Like you're a why w h y. Like your why is I want to be the grandma that has knowledge to pass on. The why is I want to be able to have my. Let my children have experience with starting businesses and, and to get that exposure to adult life while they're still kids. And that's going to really do a lot for them. You know, when I have this agro tourism like this family economy type situation. So you want to have two years worth of food. So I love that your why the wh y that they drive you and I think they help to foster a lot of success and accomplishment because you know the direction that you're headed. The book is fantastic. Just came out this week. It's called the Preserver's Garden. How to grow a Garden for Fermenting, Canning, Pickling, Dehydrating, Freeze drying and more freeze dried watermelon. Oh, that's so cool.

[Stacy Hill]

It's a little faded too.

[Jeremy Hill]

It's a little faded. This is actually from 2024, so this is actually kind of old, but if.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Only you could pass me one through the screen.

[Stacy Hill]

I know, right?

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Look at that.

[Stacy Hill]

Don't crumble it on your computer.

[Jeremy Hill]

See, it's just. It crumbles to powder and it's. It's watermelon powder.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

And it tastes like watermelon.

[Stacy Hill]

Yep.

[Jeremy Hill]

It tastes like the most flavorful watermelon you've ever had because it's so concentrated.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

That is so cool.

[Jeremy Hill]

Had to do a demo feel.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Hopefully we visit sometime. That is incredible.

[Stacy Hill]

Good.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Okay. Well, I, I love it. I love what you're doing and I love that there's a bigger picture even beyond the information. It's just like inspiring lifestyle change, living seasonally, all those different things so people can follow you at Gooseberry Ridge. Gooseberry Bridge. Did I say it wrong at the beginning?

[Jeremy Hill]

Nope, that's right.

[Stacy Hill]

Okay, well you've. Yeah, I did say it wrong just now, but not Gooseberry Bridge. There's an actual.

[Jeremy Hill]

There's a bridge on our, on our driveway.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

That's what I would have assumed. Gooseberry Bridge Farm. People can come to the you pick flower farm in the summer and also check out the book the Preserver's Garden. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite Memory from your childhood.

[Stacy Hill]

That was outside, you get to go first.

[Jeremy Hill]

You know, for me it, I thought about this.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Most people haven't because they don't listen. So that's actually kind of interesting.

[Stacy Hill]

Told them.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah, it, it was picking. I, I think about my grandpa's garden. So my grandpa was born in 1922. Depression, World War II. And he always had a big tomato garden and going out and picking a red tomato off the plant and eating it like an apple and having it run down your body. You know, a lot of times when we're out in our garden, that memory will come to me and you know, it's, it's just kind of a really cool thing to think that in 50, 70 years our kids are going to have that same thought come through their head.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Oh, do you know, I love that. Someone said the other day. It was Aaron Lynem, she's written a couple really good books and she was talking about how God made nature as like a capsule for our memories. And I thought that was so deep like that the. We really remember sensory experiences. So we remember the colors and the smells and the taste and you know, when you're out outdoors, it's such an ultimate sensory experience. And like okay, now I've got my iPhone and it's got 242,000 pictures on it. You know, but like that's so new and that people did not have that before. And so God made these nature experiences and to sort of help to take us back.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah, I mean taste, Mel, everything right there.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Ah, it's so cool.

[Stacy Hill]

And I have none of that but, but I, you know, remembered all sorts of other things like doing like at my grandparents house. It's always grandparents houses that where you have these memories. But we used to spend a lot of time at our grandma's house catching lizards and putting them in little jars and letting them go. Yeah, we're in Florida.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

So like I just feel like grandparents often have a, it's a little bit more expansive time time, you know, so they can be a little more present. So a lot of people do talk about things with their grandparents.

[Jeremy Hill]

Yeah, I think they have a lot more, they have a lot more perspective too.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

They do, yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

You know when, when you're a parent and you're worried about keeping people alive and educated and you know.

[Stacy Hill]

Yeah.

[Jeremy Hill]

You lose track of the, that bigger picture a lot of times and that's something grandparents have a little bit better.

[Stacy Hill]

Something I've liked about having six kids too. But the younger ones, you're. You're Just more.

[Jeremy Hill]

We have that grandparent perspective a little bit more.

[Stacy Hill]

You do.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

You do feel like a grandma, don't you? I. I just read a book that was talking about how when you have more kids, there's. You see a little bit more clearly that there's so much variety between the children, and so it's not really in your control.

[Stacy Hill]

Yes.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

And that's a good thing.

[Jeremy Hill]

It's absolutely.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

That they're going to kind of grow and along their own paths. And so we're just there to. To guide and to provide opportunities like what you're doing. It's an honor to meet the both of you. Thank you so much for being here.

[Jeremy Hill]

Thank you. It's been fun.

[Stacy Hill]

Y.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Thank you for being here today. Make sure you're following the show so new episodes land in your feed automatically on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You go to the show page and tap, follow or the plus sign. It takes a quick second and it helps a lot. Our February schedule is complete and it is robust. We're talking about everything from archaeology to amazing. A man who plugged his nose for 10 days straight to see how bad his health would decline. From constant mouth breathing to an explorer who takes his young kids on expansive hikes where there are no trails, to water safety to Montessori living at home. It's going to be a great month following the show. Make sure you don't miss any episodes.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

One last reminder before you go.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

The 1000 hours outside app sale ends tomorrow, January 31st. It's 24.99 for the year, and it's been such a practical help for so many families who want less screen time and more real life. If you want it, grab it now.

While the price is still live.

And if the app isn't your thing.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Our free tracker sheets are always available.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Too, at 1000hours outside.comTrackers.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

All right.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Happy weekend, friends. I hope you've had a good January. Until next time. May you find extraordinary moments on ordinary paths.

[Narrator/Poet]

Get outside open your eyes Feel that sunshine kissing your skin Throw your worries.

[Jeremy Hill]

Out to the wind.

[Narrator/Poet]

Climb some trees Skin your knees Feel that grass on your feet again get out there and.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Take it in.

[Stacy Hill]

Oh.

[Narrator/Poet]

It'S a beautiful.

[Stacy Hill]

World.

[Narrator/Poet]

Ain't nothing on the screen that's ever gonna be this.

[Host - Jenny Ertz]

Oh.

[Narrator/Poet]

It'S a.

[Stacy Hill]

Beautiful world.

[Narrator/Poet]

And I just want to share with I just want to share with you this beautiful world Such a beautiful world.