How to know when or if your family is ready to make the move to the country. Nav­i­gate the tran­si­tion while keeping your mar­riage healthy.

AdAgrA 2023: Digging Deeper

<p>How to know when or if your family is ready to make the move to the country. Nav­i­gate the tran­si­tion while keeping your mar­riage healthy.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Homesteading

Tom Waters

Alane Waters

Homestead Harmony or Country Catastrophe

So we really appreciated what Chad shared and he dealt with a lot of very practical homesteading ideas, principles.

We're going to be focusing primarily on what happens in relationships and this is why the title Homestead Harmony.

I realize it could be a single person, but we're gonna be in the context of marriage and family.

Or did we get off to the wrong start, or Maybe we got on the right track, but our relationship is getting off track.

So we wanna begin with prayer and invite the Holy Spirit to be with us.

We all need his work in our hearts so that we can understand More his will for our lives.

So if you'll bow your heads with us, we will invite God's presence.

Father in heaven, we are so grateful that no matter where we come from, or who we are, or where we are, you have promised to be there with us.

You have promised to give wisdom and understanding.

You've promised to heal broken relationships.

And today, not just in this workshop, but all across this campus, we are inviting your presence to be in the hearts of all of us to gain the wisdom and the understanding you would have us to know so that we can fully more completely represent the great God you are.

We pray for that spirit in all of us, in Jesus' name, amen.

So, obviously, we could be people that are already homesteading.

Is it harmonious, or are we running into issues, or we may be first-timers that are just saying, you know, I think God is asking me to do something different.

I believe in the country living message and what does God want me to do?

So it doesn't matter where we are and if we're just thinking about moving or if we're already there, there are some things we all need to focus on in order to make our life in the setting we are most beneficial, most useful, and most harmonious, right?

Some people have the attitude that when I get to the country, then I will be, then we will be, and we fill in those blanks with all kind of things, then I'll be a good mom.

Then we will know we'll be a better family.

When we move, we take, we can leave everything behind, but if we take ourselves, we are going to be the same.

So we're looking at this topic from where we are today.

How many of you are actually in the country setting?

And how many of you are desirous of being in the country?

So the focus today is to be the best we are where we are and then Be open on how God leads us and how that works so Do you have a dream?

Did you have a dream depending on whether you're there or you want to be there because many times what we find as we do a lot of marriage counseling in our ministry is that people don't have mutuality.

Maybe 1 person has this real desire, thinking of 1 couple, she just desperately wanted to be in the country, she wanted to have her children in the country, she really wasn't on board together with her husband, It became a situation where she begged, she pleaded, they finally made the move.

They weren't, they didn't count the cost.

What ended up happening, they got, you know, they got their chickens and they got a few animals.

So, I don't know how many of you, when you planned to come to this workshop today, actually looked on the website and printed off, or at least you can go on your phone and see our outline, you would notice that it is quite blank.

And the reason why that is is because we know that if we wrote everything out for you, you wouldn't listen as attentively, You would read over the top of it and leave, but if you have to write it in and fill it in as you hear and you write it, you will retain it.

And that's important because we are going to be saturated over the next few days.

There are dozens of workshops, more than 23 workshops every day.

We can pick 1 out of 7 maybe in this session, right?

But there's going to be so much valuable, helpful, motivating information.

This is 1 of the things that we do in our home to make it simple.

If you don't, didn't print it off, you can take notes.

So the first thing he said was, did you have a dream, a vision for what it was going to be?

If you're married, did your spouse have a vision or a dream of what he thought or she thought your new life would look like?

And third question is, so these are just simply yes or no questions, the third question is if you both had a vision, a dream, how you thought life was going to be when you got to this beautiful country setting, did you share that between the 2 of you?

Like you said, this couple, she had the dream.

They moved, and then their life got complicated and chaotic and a catastrophe nearly cost them their marriage.

So That is not the purpose of country living.

In fact, I just talked to this person recently, and she said, you know what, Elaine?

When I called you because things aren't going good in our home, you said to me, your marriage is ahead of where you live, where you live in the country.

Marriage has a higher priority under God than where our house sits in our location So this is important to remember we not that we don't want to move into the country but we want to be in the country or move to the country or homestead harmoniously, right?

When I was a child growing up in suburbia, I longed to live in the country.

I always wished I could live in the country.

I had the idyllic home picked out, what it was going to look like, how the gardens were going to be.

So I didn't have this same dream, this same understanding.

But we needed to talk about it because when I saw or heard the dream that she had, it just didn't seem practical, realistic, and it's not going to happen that easily.

So this is 1 of the things that we focus on is if you're not communicating, and I hate to say this, but it's true, we've met many, many couples and families over the years that 1 of the motivations for them to move is life is not working out where they are.

Our focus is going to be that life needs to be coming together harmoniously where we are, working through the things we need to work through before we try to uproot ourselves and hope it will be better on the other end.

So if we're in the country, we want to work there.

If we're still in suburbia, we want to work there, right?

Because we want to move forward as a team.

Now With this concept of country living, before we got married, and Chad mentioned, Chad Cruiser mentioned this little book called Country Living, little pamphlet book.

It's green, used to be green back in the day.

When we get married, we're going to live in the country because that's what our desire.

We looked, we hunted, we researched, we did everything, but we're also medical professionals.

That meant we had to live within a certain distance of our employer, the big hospital, which is in the city.

And so we could not find a country property.

So then, you know, you're getting married, the time is ticking down.

We found a little place, we rented for a while, and then we got caught up in the life, and then we moved closer to the hospital because it was more convenient for both of us.

And you know, life started moving ahead of us, and somehow the busyness of life overtook the initial passion and desire God planted in our hearts to where he wanted us to live, especially to raise a family.

Yeah, so wherever you find yourself in this situation, the most important thing, and Chad mentioned this at the very beginning and we're going to emphasize this we need our relationship and connection with God that is a real vital connection it is not a ritual it is not just going through the motions It is to be still morning by morning and know that He is God.

When we know that He is God and we're willing to surrender ourselves that He can be our God today, life gets more harmonious.

Now there might be more trials, there might be more hard things that we go through but if we're making that connection individually and then making that connection with each other we are going to make more harmonious decisions.

And that's the focus we're going to keep coming back to.

We call it a catalyst that took place because we have a whole series on country living which we can't consolidate into this you know 45 minute session but 1 Friday night in the busyness of our jobs working as medical professionals 1 Friday night and I called it a rare Friday night.

It was an evening together down by the fireplace with our 2 little 2 little girls at the time.

We have 3 children now, but this is 2 little girls in their little footie pajamas.

Weston Adams

Growing No-Spray Fruit on a Budget

Today what we're going to be talking about is no spray orcharding on a budget.

So we're going to be focusing on growing fruit for your homestead, it might be your school, it might be your whatever it is, maybe your family, your lifestyle Center, and we're going to be talking about doing it on a budget.

Before we get started, if you are here in person, some people are going to be listening to this online, If you're in here in person as part of the agriculture conference, hopefully you downloaded the handout.

There was a handout that goes with this class.

If you haven't downloaded it, We have a QR code we can throw up on the screen here, hopefully momentarily.

And that is where you can go ahead and download it now.

Because some of the stuff I'm going to be talking about is on that resource list, the handout that goes with this class.

For those of you who are viewing this later, I believe AudioVerse will have the PowerPoints with this class.

So whether you're viewing it on Audioverse or somewhere else, if you have the PowerPoints, I'm going to put the class handout in the bottom of the PowerPoints so you can access that if nothing else.

That makes it easier for us to upload this for people to view later, listen to later, If all the questions are held to the end.

And, hopefully we'll get PowerPoints going here in a minute.

But we won't hold out, hold out too long.

So, I wonder, have any of you looked at fruit tree prices lately?

You can spend a lot of money on fruit trees.

I was talking to a friend recently and he was looking at prices.

Well actually more what he was looking at is the availability of fruit trees.

And so when people feel uncertain, it seems like they want to invest in fruit trees for some reason.

Now the Bible does talk about a time when the powers that be are going to oppress people who are trying to think for themselves.

And so I think that we shouldn't rely on our orchards necessarily, but I think that it's good preparation to be learning how to grow our own food and fruit trees are definitely a part of that.

So all these trees that are being sold, they are selling out.

Nurseries are selling out and these trees are going somewhere.

If you were to follow most of those trees to the yards where they're planted and see, track them for a few years.

In the East, at least in Tennessee, Missouri, this whole eastern part of the US, you would find that a lot of those trees never end up producing much.

Maybe you found that in your own orchard.

I want to focus today on Why it is that these trees don't produce much in a lot of cases and so why they don't produce much, how you can produce them, this is kind of 3, why they don't produce much and how you can produce them with no spray and then second how you can do that with very little money.

If you live in the southeast and if you've tried to grow fruit here, chances are you've probably experienced some of the challenges.

In this climate, we have high heat, we have high humidity, we have high bugs, we have high fungus, we have late frosts.

If you need to pull up the handout, you can snap that real quick.

You can manually advance it back there if that's easy enough.

What I was going to show you is some pictures of...

This is an example of some of the pests and diseases we deal with in this part of the world.

The pictures might look beautiful in the catalog, but when you try to plant nectarines, peaches, plums, this is the kind of thing you get in this part of the world.

They might look beautiful in the catalog, but we have a lot of pests and diseases.

Fire blight, plum curcurlio, all kinds of stuff.

So why is it that in this area fruit just don't do very well?

Well if you think about it all of our fruit, the peaches, the nectarines, the plums, whatever it is that we're used to eating, most of that is coming from drier climates.

Think California, Western Washington, climates like that.

And the grocery store has educated most of us.

We're used to the stuff that the grocery store sells us.

And so when we think, oh, I'm gonna go plant a fruit tree, we naturally gravitate toward the stuff that we're used to buying.

But when we buy that stuff, if we planted that stuff in California or if we planted that stuff in Western Washington, our story would probably be a little different.

But when we try to plant that stuff here, we usually have problems.

So there are several ways to deal with this.

You can talk to your extension office and they will tell you how you can spray your trees.

There are dangers to it, I believe, but if you choose to spray, at least you know what you're spraying.

When you buy from the store, you don't even know what you're spraying.

So if you choose to spray that is a viable option and I would contact your extension office to get the regimen for a particular crop.

But what I want to talk about is how you can plant such that you won't have to spray.

It's a little bit of a different paradigm, so that's what we're going to talk about today.

Most of my experience personally has been in the humid southeast, so that's that's partly why I'm catering to this area.

And so I'm going to talk about a couple different fruits that I have seen in the east do very well without sprays.

Now, if you live in this part of the world, you probably have seen these growing on trees.

The ones I have up on the screen are actually Asian persimmons.

They're Diasporas khaki is the Latin name.

And they they're grown throughout the Orient, China.

In our area we have Diasporas virginiana which is the American persimmon.

They have a really strong astringency if you eat these guys green.

In 2013, this is a little bit of my story, in 2013 through 2017, about in there, our family was planting a lot of fruit trees and we planted everything.

We planted apples, we planted peaches, plums, nectarines, we planted nuts, we planted persimmons, we planted figs, we planted everything.

And of all everything we planted, this is 1 of the crops that has given us the biggest return.

I would say this is the crop that has given us the biggest return, not 1 of the crops.

I would say this is the 1 that has given us the biggest return.

And these things require almost no spray.

We've never sprayed and I know many people who have never sprayed these.

Diasporas virginiana, that's the 1 that we're used to seeing in the wild.

Janet Brandauer

Sarah Brandauer

Shepherding with Love

My name is Sarah and this is my mom Janet.

We're with Happy Nest Farms and we have raised sheep for 10 years.

Being able to experience and to build the relationship between sheep and shepherd has been so impactful for me personally and I'm excited to be able to share that experience with others.

I'm not so much of a speaker so I'm really glad and blessed to have my mom Janet here who is also a sheep enthusiast to join me today in sharing this wonderful experience.

This is our family on our farm 3 years ago and we've learned that shepherding becomes a family endeavor.

So, okay this, our sheep experience actually started with my son, Josiah.

We had done videos for our ministry, and we had done some sheep videos, and he had saw them, and he got the experience of this, this was a bum lamb, a bum lamb is 1 that the mother has rejected and so they have to bottle feed it.

And so he got to have this experience and he fell in love.

And what he had been doing in his studies is that every bible story seemed to have sheep in it.

And he said, you know, I want that experience.

Now, the first lamb that we got was a bum lamb from someone who gave it to us for free.

And what we didn't know about this lamb was the lamb was blind.

And it had other problems and we didn't realize it.

But he was so careful with this lamb, he fell in love with it, and our whole family did.

Bartimaeus, as you know in the Bible, was blind.

But this was a girl, so it's Berthimaeus.

And It's amazing how much that lamb touched our hearts.

And even though she was blind, she responded to him so well.

If he was gone, she would back, a little, you know, cute little back.

But what we didn't realize was that she hadn't got the colostrum from her mother.

And colostrum is very important, the first milk from a mother is very important.

But it taught us a valuable lesson because we got so attached to this little lamb and didn't have it very long, but it went into our hearts, and it showed us, you know, in the Bible, they took a lamb in, and that lamb they'd raised for a little while, and then that lamb was usually the lamb that they took to offer to slaughter.

And I understood more deeply why a lamb was chosen to represent Christ.

Because the, oh, It was just this bonding thing and it was so painful.

Decide, decide, forget it, I'm out of sheep.

It was just too painful, he didn't want to do it.

But at that moment I told him, I thought, well, we need perseverance in our family.

And I said, well, pray about it, because if God wants us to have it, he'll impress you, so go and study.

So he went out and he took his Bible and he prayed.

He came back with a verse and he said, I'm in.

And he actually earned the money himself to get more sheep.

And we got another bum lamb as well that was further along.

Josiah was learning what to do with sheep.

Now, sheep are not known to be carriers, but he was training them.

And we had halters and he was training them because he wanted them to follow him, like the Bible, you know?

He had a relationship, and that's what God wants with us, right?

He started figuring out, okay, maybe that's not what they're really supposed to do, okay?

But when we first got our lamb, because we had our girl bred, and he was leading them, and I got very attached as well, to be honest with you, and then Sarah totally fell in love.

Adamantly thinking sheep were not a thing.

But after this experience, as you can see her smile, she fell in love.

Also for pets to experience that relationship, the shepherd-sheep bond.

Grass management, they are raised for meat and dairy, although we don't advocate that.

Fertilizer, surprisingly sheep manure is significantly higher in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium per ton than horse or cow manure.

So with the nitrogen it's 20 versus 11 and 9 per ton, with phosphorus 9, 6 and 6, and potassium 17 versus the 13 and 8.

So you can see it has a significant higher nutritional value for the soil than horse or cow manure.

It does not need aging, it's not hot, so it can go directly on your garden, so that's a big advantage.

And there are hundreds of different kinds of breeds of sheep.

We raise merinos, which is the top there.

The Jacobs are a breed that dates back to Bible times, where you have Jacob in the Bible that had this spotted and speckled sheep.

The merinos are ones that have wool that can go right close to your skin.

You can hear about the Marino wool for leggings or undergarments.

If you get a chance, you've got to come feel some.

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Series

Homesteading

Homestead Harmony or Country Catastrophe

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Homestead Harmony or Country Catastrophe

1h

Growing No-Spray Fruit on a Budget

50m

Shepherding with Love

1h 1m

All You Need to Know About Money on an Index Card

58m

Moving to the Country: Personal Finance Considerations

1h 3m

Garden Grown Kids

57m

The Secret Walmart in the Woods

1h 4m

Sound Doctrine