Episode 196 with Jill Winger
The Easier Things Have Gotten, The Unhappier We've Become
SHOW NOTES:
Join Ginny Yurich and Jill Winger in this thought-provoking episode, as they challenge the norms, celebrate resilience, and beckon us to embrace the discomfort that leads to a richer, more meaningful life.
Learn more about Jill here >> https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/
Purchase your copy of Old-Fashioned on Purpose here >> https://amzn.to/3rsTqJi
Purchase your copy of Jill's highly-ranked cookbook here >> https://amzn.to/3PR13Cy
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1KHO 156: Humans are Wired to Need Worthy Struggle | Jill Winger, Old Fashioned on Purpose
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
196 JILL WINGER
Ginny Yurich All right. Are you ready? I'm ready. Let's do it.
Jill Winger Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and Jill Winger is back. Welcome.
Ginny Yurich Thanks so much for having me again. I can't wait.
Jill Winger Yeah, this is awesome. Last time we talked about your fantastic cookbook, I mean, that cookbook has got a life of its own. It's got so many reviews. It's a phenomenal cookbook. It's just a favorite of so many peoples. And when we talk last time you were talking about your book that's coming out here just in September, remember they are going back to the drawing board for the cover.
Ginny Yurich Yes. Yes, you did. There was some coverage of I haven't really been able to talk about all of that publicly, but there was yeah, there was some back and forth on the cover.
Jill Winger Yeah.
Jill Winger I love how it turned out.
Ginny Yurich Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's good. It took a while to get there, but we made it.
Jill Winger We made it.
Jill Winger Did. I mean, I love the cover, so it's called old fashioned on purpose, cultivating a slower, more joyful life. This is a comprehensive book.
Ginny Yurich Yes, I really. I wanted to do a deep dive. There's a lot of homesteading books on the market now. There didn't used to be. The homestead itself has exploded at bookstores, but I see a lot of them are really focusing on completely practical how to and I wanted this one to be like a mindset book and a more little more philosophy, bigger picture. So it was fun to write. Yeah.
Jill Winger Yeah. And so that's what you do. You kind of go through your process of starting off as a child and kind of having these longings for horses and a different life and the process just unfolds over the course of many, many years. Can we start at the point in the story where you are pregnant? Yes, really pregnant, like about to have a baby, this and also your family event and grabbing goats at the same time?
Ginny Yurich Yes, that was a pivotal point in my life. So I was eight months pregnant with our first child. So all the new mom stresses and things that you go through. And we were simultaneously starting to increase our homestead efforts. We had bought our homestead about a year and a half prior, and we had started off with a compost piles and a garden, and I think we had chickens by then, but I really wanted raw milk. And raw milk was illegal to purchase. Like most states in Wyoming at the time, it was illegal to purchase. And I was like, okay, well, if I want raw milk, it's too far to drive anywhere that would have it where I could buy it. So I just have to get, you know, produce it myself, obviously. And so a cow, a dairy cow felt a little bit like a big leap. So goats were just the logical option. And so, you know, ever the efficient one. I had this barbecue to go to in Colorado, and I had also found goats that I wanted to purchase nearby. And so I talked to my husband into taking our stock trailer to pick up the goats and then roll into this barbecue. And the barbecue was like in a really nice downtown suburban neighborhood like it was now and on the outskirts of town. So we roll in and we park this horse trailer. We had to like find parking because this is neighborhoods are not designed for horse trailer parking, you know, squeeze it in. And they were Nubian goats. And so they're very loud. They're just known to be kind of screamers. And so we're sitting there eating hamburgers, trying to be like prim and proper and polite.
Jill Winger Like super pregnant.
Ginny Yurich Super break like I like when I'm pregnant. I get huge. Like I am not cute. I am like Wale pregnant. So I was like, ginormous pregnant. Everyone's trying to talk about the baby and baby preparations and there's goats screaming on the curb. And it was just I thought it was great. It felt right. And I can just imagine what the family was thinking at that point. So that was a really interesting foreshadowing of life to come. I think that kind of shows how I move through life. We take a lot of messy, imperfect, sometimes crazy action, but that has served us well, just diving in and, you know, building a parachute on the way down to mixed metaphors there. But yeah, it was a fun story to think back on now.
Jill Winger And it's an action that is counterculture. So that's another point of what you did. It's not just that you have these goats with you, it's the fact that the reason you're getting the goats is because the government says you can't buy raw milk, but you wanted to buy raw milk. So why did you want to have raw milk?
Ginny Yurich Yeah, So I did a lot of reading. I was introduced to the West and Price Foundation at that time, so that was kind of back in those. I like such an old lady. Back in those days of blogs, it was, you know, if you are doing a healthy living blog, it wasn't Kito or Paleo or vegan, it was West. And a price like that was really dominating a lot of the mom blogs at the time. They really preach the merits of raw milk. And then I just it was, I think, one of the first times I really started to question the things I had been told in terms of culture and food And raw milk was one of those gateways of like, okay, wait, we've always had pasteurized milk. Pasteurized milk is what they sell. The government says raw milk is the most dangerous thing you can consume. And I'm like, But what did they consume for, you know, since the beginning of time, let's say, What were they doing back then and just asking those questions, which honestly is still the question that I'm asking in this book. I became really convinced of the health benefits. It just made sense that why not drink it straight from the animal like it's kind of designed to be consumed. And I understand why pasteurization came about because there was a lot of deaths related to raw milk in the 1800s because the practices were so atrocious. So it made sense that people were getting very, very ill. But I'm like, we're not if we're not handling the animals like that anymore, why are we still cooking it? So yeah, it was like those, Oh wait, this doesn't make as much sense as I thought it did, or I had never thought of it before. And that was a really important point, not only of just pushing back against normal, like you have to kind of be willing to let your crazy hang out a little bit to bring goats to a barbecue and that feels a little foreign and can feel scary sometimes, but also like just starting to ask those questions of why do we have to do it like this? What if we did it a different way?
Jill Winger Mm hmm. And that's really the premise of the book, is that a good life stems sometimes from the good questions that you ask and just noticing, Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? And one of the big questions that people ask is, why would you put yourself through hardship when you don't have to? Why would you struggle with losing gardens and why would you dig up potatoes when you can go buy them at the store? This is a big thing that you talk about and have talked about really for a long time, is the easier things have gotten, the unhappier we've become. Mm hmm. That doesn't really make sense.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. Yeah, I found that to be, I think, personally, one of the most interesting pieces of the whole book research process. So what I call the modern paradox in terms of, you know, for the last, especially 150 years, we've pushed so hard. Thank you. Industrial Revolution to getting things easier and more convenient and more comfortable. And that's really been so much of our primary driving force. That's what prompts people to buy. That's what prompts people to consume. And I'd say, I mean, we're not all the way there, but 2023, we're pretty dang close. Like we have some EHRs, we have climate control, we don't have to have calluses on our hands to make a living. We don't have to sweat if we don't want to. We don't really have to be cold. Like the amount of complaining I hear from people when they have to walk from their house to their car to go to work and it's just cold outside. I'm like, We are so acclimated to never being uncomfortable and we worship that idea at all costs. Yet if we think about our cultural happiness levels or even look at data around that, they're pretty low, like they're pretty much, you know, tanking. So you have to ask, you know, for the last 150 years or even further back in human history, we have thought that getting our lives as easy as possible.
Jill Winger With.
Ginny Yurich As little work, as little manual work, as little as uncomfortable work as possible would be the pivotal moment. And now we're pretty much there. And it's not the pivotal moment we're actually suffering. There's a lot of interesting studies and data that kind of backs that up. This idea that when we remove all meaningful challenge from our life, our bodies just don't know what to do with that. We're designed to push into hard things were designed to be uncomfortable. We're designed to be tackling challenges. And I talk about in the book, one of the cool revelations I had is you can even see it in our storytelling. Throughout human history, stories have always been a huge part of us. There's a lot of psychology around storytelling and why humans have always latched on to it. Our brains understand things in stories better, but no one listens to a story if there is no mountain to overcome. You know, sometimes when I read my kids, you know, children's books and it's just like Bob Wooden had a sandwich, and then Bob went to the park. I went to bed at the end. It's just like for like, obviously that's a child's book, but like, they're not even interesting to my children. My children are.
Jill Winger Like.
Ginny Yurich Not feeling it. So we love stories. And the most well-loved, famous stories of all human history always have a major adversary or a major challenge. And we love hearing how the hero overcomes that and comes through the other side, even when they don't think they're going to make it. And I think it's fascinating that we love those stories. Yeah, we try to craft our life to be the exact opposite at all costs. So I think there's a little bit of a mismatch there. That's kind of fascinating.
Jill Winger Yeah, what a thing to observe. And I would agree with you where they're right. Like you talk about, you know, we've got the Roomba, we've got the dishwasher, we've got the air conditioning and we've got the vehicles, and yet we are not happier than probably what people would have thought. We've got the canned food and the microwaves. But one of the other things that you talk about in the book that's really fascinating is that our brains sort of acclimate to this comfort that we're in and then basically, like make up problems from the littler things.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, that said, it's actually a study that was fascinating. It's the problem of CREEP. And in essence, these researchers will try to kind of condense it down. They brought in a bunch of participants in a study and they started showing them a series of pictures. They were testing this idea. And so there's a bunch of different sets of pictures, but one of them was a bunch of faces like line drawings, the faces. And they were pretty, you know, simple drawings. But some of the faces had a more menacing look and some had just a more neutral or just like happy look. And so they would sit the people down and they'd flash these pictures in front of them quickly. And then the person. Then the participant had to go, okay, that's a threatening face, but that's a nonthreatening face. Just like on there. They're quick judgment. And what they didn't know, what the researchers didn't tell them. And as the pictures progressed through the stack, they were showing them less truly threatening faces. This has got more and more neutral. And they started to get kind of like a little more friendly, so less threatening, more friendly. But what the researchers discovered is that as the truly threatening pictures started to become less and less and less, the participants started to categorize more of the pictures as threatening. So that's a little bit convoluted, maybe. But what it shows us is in the absence of actual problems or actual things in one category, our brain makes up more problems. It makes up things to be a struggle that it really shouldn't be a struggle. Yeah. And I think, you know, we laugh a lot about first world problems, you know, Oh, my gosh, Starbucks is out of whatever soy milk or, you know, we laugh about that. But really that that in real life application is that we don't have meaningful struggles. So the littlest things throw us into a tailspin and make us feel really miserable. And so if I if I if it's up to me, I would rather build in a meaningful challenge. Challenge that feels good. That's not just kind of this whiny first world idea of I'm inconvenienced and my life is over. But that meaningful challenge feels a lot better and it makes our brains really happy.
Jill Winger We're chasing something that doesn't exist. Yes, it won't exist because once your life gets easier, the wording you use here is trivial. Things become troublesome. Yes. And so it's just not ever going to exist. So what we're missing is like you talk about we're missing that meaningful part. I loved when you were talking about, look, if I'm feeding hay and chopping ice in below zero temps, the crackling fire feels real good. Yeah. And so we're missing that. We're missing those two ends of the spectrum. And you talk about hardship like we're talking about comfort. And why would I planted tomato if I can just go back to the store? It's a lot of work, but also there's a lot of chance for failure. And it definitely happens because that's how things go in nature. You get a hailstorm. We got a hailstorm this year. You get bindweed and it takes over. That's what happened is it takes over the whole garden when you're out of town at a conference and you know, you look at someone like you and you've been homesteading now for a long time and are a leader in this space. People look to you, but you struggle with your garden and have struggled with your gardens. It's not been a piece of cake for you. So what about the people that are like, okay, I'm convinced about the hard work, but why would I do something if I know I might fail?
Ginny Yurich That's such a good question. I think that is a fear that so many people have. And my answer to that would be that we can never have good things. So we're never going to be able to get what we want or achieve success in the areas that matter to us. And says success doesn't always mean monetary. I mean a lot of different things. We're never going to have that unless we fail some to get there. They go together. They cannot be separated. So if you want the thing, let's say you want to get in shape or you want to grow some food or you want to be competitive and a certain hobby that you have, you cannot get to that objective without messing up, without going through beginner mode will hit beginner mode. I don't like to be the beginner in something, but you have to go through that discomfort in order to get to the thing on the other side. And I think that maybe, I don't know, there's got to be something in our modern culture where we have exalted ease so much that we've lost that piece that like, okay, but you still have to be uncomfortable to get what you're really after in life. And I think that's important.
Jill Winger I was trying to Amy from Homesteaders America and we were talking about how when COVID happened, there was this huge rush towards some of her videos that were about basically getting seeds in the ground. How do you grow food? And that was such an interesting thing because there must be this thought that it's really easy to figure out like, Oh, if things happen and the world falls apart, I'll just learn how to garden then.
Jill Winger Yeah.
Jill Winger But it doesn't really work that way.
Ginny Yurich It does it. And I like to say it's it's simple, but it's not always easy. That COVID period was so fascinating. I've told this story a few times. I truly thought when the virus started hitting in the early spring, you know, we make a living creating content and teaching people how to homestead. And I looked at my husband and I said, I think our business is done. I don't think I will have a platform. No one's going to care about gardening when they're they're worried about this virus, Like who's going to be making canned tomatoes when they're they're in quarantine. Like now I'm like, Jill, what an idiot. It's like.
Jill Winger Well.
Ginny Yurich We all know what happened. The exact opposite. My platform exploded during COVID, but I didn't see it coming. And I, I think it's such a fascinating thing that how we ran back to those time honored principles and those time honored skills in an age of upheaval. But yeah, I think that's a good point that you bring up. I love that people were motivated by COVID to look in the old fashioned things and think about making bread and think about planting seeds. But these are not just survival skills. And I get a little bit, I don't know the right word, grouchy, annoyed. Sometimes there's this mindset of fear around, you know, I like this, you know, the zombie mindset we. Have to be ready. The end of the world is coming. The end of the world is coming. That's a really easy way to sell things, is to get people really scared. But I don't do what I do out of fear. I don't do it out of just to save me from whatever's happening at the end of the world. Scenarios. These are human skills. These are skills that keep us human in a world that's increasingly trying to make us not human and trying to fit isn't a little perfect robot factory boxes. And I think I hope that people maybe COVID prompted them to look in these ideas again. But I hope that people will grasp on to them, even if they're not scared of the end of the world, even if they're thinking everything is okay right now because they're really important to us for our health and happiness and well-being.
Jill Winger Yeah, there's these practicalities, right? Like, you need to learn how to grow the food. You want to learn to make the sour dough bread. But there must have been something in all of those things that people did that sustained them emotionally and mentally and spiritually, their soul. They're moving back to these things that make us feel good. The bread makes us feel good. And I think that's probably why a lot of it has sustained. People are still doing those things even now that they don't have to. It's like they relearned that, number one, they can do it, but also it makes them feel really good. And you talked about that in your book. You were talking about joy, the words you use first, homemade tortillas on top of the world's first egg. Utter ecstasy, first meal, grown entirely on your property, walking on air for at least 24 hours. You said. I had experienced fleeting glimpses of joy here and there, but now it engulfed me. The world had opened and I was seeing color for the first time. These are huge statements. Gel? Yeah. From an egg.
Ginny Yurich From an egg. I know.
Jill Winger I know.
Ginny Yurich I know. As I wrote that, I'm like, is this is this overdramatic? But I really it really wasn't like I think back to those early years on the homestead. Those were some of the most magical years because I was, you know, experiencing that for the first time. And I and I cannot like I cannot fully describe what happened in me as I started to realize I could make things, I could affect change on my land. I could become a producer instead of a consumer. When I think back to how I felt as a little girl, I had little cravings for that, but I could not verbalize it. And I couldn't even consciously like, understand what I was feeling. And it was like the puzzle pieces fell into place at that point and I was high on adrenaline for months and years, just like we can do this and now I can make this. And I remember going to people and like I remember one friend, I'm making yogurt and she's like, gross.
Jill Winger And I was just like, devastated.
Ginny Yurich I'm like.
Jill Winger How could you think that's gross?
Ginny Yurich Like, I can make yogurt.
Jill Winger From milk at.
Ginny Yurich Home for free? Well, I'm not really free, but I thought it was pretty young. I was going to save millions of dollars by making my own yogurt. That's a whole nother conversation. I was just like, couldn't fathom why people weren't just, like, jumping up and down excited. I guess. I'm a total weirdo and a little bit nerdy. But it was it was such a fun period of discovering all those things. And it just feels amazing when I think we plug into that for the first time.
Jill Winger Hm Well, and nature makes it so that it doesn't ever really end. There's always more. There's always something else. You can try a new type of sheep. The other day we found these things in the woods called Ghost Pipes. There's these flowers and they're white and they. They have no chlorophyl. They're flowers and they only bloom for one week a year. I've never seen one. So that's how nature is. It's like you always on a homestead. You always have opportunities to see a new variety of a. My friend has Indian runner. I guess they're not even ducks. I'm not totally sure. Anyway, they're so cute and they run after each other. All of these different things that you don't even really know exist. You can try different types of plants and you can try different heirloom varieties of seeds. And so it's one of those things that that ecstasy and that joy of trying something new can last a whole lifetime. Really. You only have a countable number of chances to grow a garden. Yeah. Now, I didn't start, I was in my almost 40. I have a countable number of times to give it a shot and to try different things. And so the opportunity for that newness to always be there is one of the things that home setting provides beyond like you talk about the practicalities and being able to care for yourself. So in this book, old fashion on purpose, cultivating a slower, more joyful life, which is a comprehensive book jump, it came in the mail. I was so excited to read it. There's so much information in here, great stories, interesting topics. You go through a lot of the old fashioned ways, which are not anything mind blowing, right? It's like, grow your own food, cook your own meals, make things, but it gives people a roadmap, right? Like if I said, look, you know, I am feeling really unfulfilled in my life. I could pick this book up and start right now. I could grab some of these different topics and start right where we're at. So can we start with cooking at home? You brought that up in the last time that we talked with your Prairie Homestead Cookbook, which is a phenomenal cookbook, that cooking at home is homesteading. It's a component of homesteading. So someone lives in apartment, someone lives in the city. They haven't really hopped into any of this container gardening. They don't have anything on their windowsill, any herbs or anything like that. They're at square one. They could start cooking at home and be a little a little bit of a homesteader. What would advice would you give to someone who doesn't cook from scratch at all?
Jill Winger Yeah.
Ginny Yurich Which is a lot of people because we've really been sold a very compelling story by marketers over the last hundred years that cooking is beneath us. Cooking is drudgery. Cooking, It's not worth your time. And I really love to push back against that narrative because I think it's stealing so much from us. So what I would say to someone who has never cooked before is like, you don't have to go whole hog like overnight. You can start small. You can take baby steps. I say usually start by just reconsidering your ingredients, like when you go grocery shopping, look at your cart. Are you buying pre-made everything or are you buying components? And over the years, as we've shifted into this homestead lifestyle, like if you look at my car at the grocery store, which I don't go very much anymore. I usually get my groceries either from places like our standard or co-ops or, you know, local or where I grew up myself. But I still go to the grocery store stuff sometimes, but I'm buying components that allow me to make multiple things, you know, flour, sugar, baking soda, vegetables, meats, things that are helping me make a variety of different foods versus just pre-made, ready made all the time. So I think just thinking about that, just thinking what you're buying, thinking about where it's coming from, the impact that's having. I talk about that in the book. And I know to some people that's a review. But to some people it's not like, was this local? Did it was it growing in China because some of our food is grown in China or in, you know, South America and it's coming a long ways. What's the impact it's having? And then just pick something that you enjoy eating, you know, something that you really feel motivated to make and see if you can try making a piece of that or making all of it. Maybe it's making gravy, maybe it's making biscuits, maybe it's learning how to roasted chicken. And the reason I always start with the food is because I know that if I can get people hooked on that just a little bit, if they can just try a few things, I know the dopamine is going to release in their brain and they're going to feel a little charge of excitement and then they're going to try something else and then they're going to it just like the snowball of momentum that they'll end up becoming a lot more engaged in the world around them just by thinking about food differently.
Jill Winger And the marketing sure is interesting. You said beneath the drudgery, not worth your time. Also, I think they marketed that. It's really hard. Yeah. And I remember the first time that I made a loaf of bread and it's sort of been just over a decade ago, and I just remember thinking, this is not hard or.
Ginny Yurich Yeah.
Jill Winger This is so easy. I just remember thinking like, this is only a couple of ingredients. White flour, sugar, yeast, water makes me an if you just weirdo. You don't even need the yeast. I'm like, This makes me bread. And it's the most delicious bread I've ever had. And it grows. And I've got all these kids and now I have a food that grows good. And then I remember thinking about all the foods that I assumed you couldn't make. Like a cracker.
Ginny Yurich Yes. You know.
Jill Winger The things that come in boxes and you're like, Well, what? Oh, you can make a cracker. Yeah. And all of these different things. And so you had some really interesting things in the book about the actual marketing, like the Wonder Bread, and they're saying it's got as much iron as three lamb chops and and.
Jill Winger And.
Jill Winger Niacin, six sardines or whatever it is. So you realized over the time period that the marketers had lied to you.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. And I had that same moment is you. And I think that was part of that revelation of like you can make crackers. Oh my gosh. And you can make tortillas and I can make yogurt and I could make like, Oh, this is like it was just like my employee to meet, like an exciting And like you said, they work hard because I just people just assume I get so many people still coming to me, Oh, I want to make bread, but then I have to, like, block off the weekend. And I'm like, No, no, you don't. Actually. You just need like we made my daughter threw together Cerrado Adobo last night. It was like 3 minutes to put it in the bowl, mix together and cover it with a towel. And then now it's been sitting while we wait. We slept and I'll bake it this morning before we homeschool. It'll take me approximately 5 minutes or actually less to put it in a basket and then the Dutch oven and bake it all at the oven. Preheat while I do dishes. Like it's just like, okay, so less than 10 minutes of active time, I'll have to love this. Our dough bread. And I've got people. It's just like the best kept secret of our time. Like if people just knew how easy it is and not just the nutrition piece, that's a big piece of it. It tastes better. It's good for you. But like, it feels good to this day. I've been making Sarto for a long time, like when I pulled all those out later this morning. I feel good when I do it. It makes me proud, it makes me feel considered. And that is something I think we're always underestimating.
Jill Winger Yeah, there's so many components to it. So I've been talking to Dan Buettner. He does the Blue Zones and he talks about like people that live to be 100 centenarians and sour dough is in his newest book, Jell O, where he talks about that. That is one of the components of these centenarians, is that they're eating salad their whole life, often for all of the meals they do salads with minestrone soup in these different cultures. And he said that the sour dough this is so interesting, which I actually never made sour. No, I've only made the bread with the yeast, which is also really fun. You can make bagels. All you have to do is stick your thumb in the middle. I'm like, Well, how do you make the whole. And then you learn. Oh, like you literally just stick your thumb in the middle and it makes the ring and you boil it. And my kids eat those in, like, 4 minutes flat. They're gone.
Jill Winger Yeah.
Jill Winger They're so easy to make with the sour dough, he says. Lowers your glycemic index for the entire meal. Basically, the sour. Don't eat up the sugars from the other foods that you're eating.
Jill Winger Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah, cool. Yes.
Jill Winger The sour dough thing is a really big deal. It's, you know, he goes in and he talks to these centenarians and he comes away with like, here's the ten things that they do. And sour dough is in there. So, I mean, that's a really phenomenal thing to think about. I'm like, I got to do it. Okay. Well, then you talked about how in the sixties and this is an interesting thing to know that people would spend 2 hours. I think this is the misnomer that the average person would spend 2 hours a day in the kitchen preparing meals. And so a lot of people look at that or, I don't know, maybe have the start of a guy, do not have the time for that. But here you say, look, I can make two loaves, a salad or bread in 10 minutes, and if you do it with soup, you're throwing those ingredients in the pot. And it really does not take 2 hours a day.
Ginny Yurich It really doesn't. Yeah. And I you know, because I think people maybe assume because of my platform like I'm my Ingles in the kitchen all day long and just like with my apron on and I'm not like especially at this stage of our life we are moving pretty quickly. I've book lunches, I have businesses, we own a restaurant. I'm home schooling, like I'm on podcast, I'm in the office. So I'm a lot more like a modern woman than people think. I'm in and out and I've got a lot of balls I'm juggling. But yeah, it can be as simple as I put something in the crock pot before we start the day. Or I just think just sometimes like 3 minutes or less of thinking ahead, pulling something out of the freezer or just going, okay, first up, we're having this and I'm going to chop this onion now and put it in a container and pull this meat out and I'll deal with the rest later. Like it just it just has a little bit of forethought and it's shocking how quickly you can get food on the table without hours and hours in the kitchen.
Jill Winger Mm hmm.
Jill Winger So you've got an awesome lesson here. People should buy the book. Just there's a couple really clueless. So one of the really coolest is top ten things to start Making from scratch. So that's a fantastic one. I loved the Bucket List. Jill. That was so fun. The bucket list of all of these skills that you can learn, the kind of like what we were talking about before. Like you're not going to exhaust this If you find joy from going back to simple things and working with your hands, you're not ever going to exhaust the list because you had this long thing about. I mean, it's everything from learning how to unclog a toilet to learning how to propagate plants through root, cutting through all of these different types of things that you can learn to incubating chickens and learning how to fish all of these hands. And this is a great list. I love this one. You say find what suits you. The old fashioned skills bucket list.
Jill Winger Yes.
Ginny Yurich Funny behind the scenes. That was actually in my cookbook. And the publisher cut it and I have saved it for four years.
Jill Winger To put in this book.
Jill Winger It's perfect for this book.
Ginny Yurich Yes, it's perfect for this book. Yeah. I've noticed in myself and other adults and children also, like when you start adding skills to your repertoire, whether that's how to make Sardo bread or how to butcher a pig or how to unclog a toilet, it changes you. But if you walk a little different, you just start to carry yourself with more confidence and you start to go, okay, I handled that problem and I don't know how to do this thing, but I bet I can figure it out because I'm a capable human and I feel like that is something that so many of our modern people are missing because we have leaned so heavily into convenience and everything is we press a button, it's an app, they deliver it, it's easy. And not that that's always bad, but man, it robs of stuff like that competence that when I put my shoulders back and I can handle the world, I can I can move through life with confidence. Like that's that's priceless.
Jill Winger Mm hmm. Any tell a story about how it relieves stress? One of the stories that you tell that really models, that is that you were in a stressful time, You opened the restaurant, you wrote, We're going to make milkshakes and live happily ever after.
Jill Winger That did not happen.
Jill Winger And I think we have these times where it pours. Like when it rains, it pours. That's what people say, right? And you feel like you're lost. You're stuck. What do we do in those moments when we're completely overwhelmed and we're engulfed? And you made.
Jill Winger Gouda? Yeah.
Jill Winger Why?
Ginny Yurich It feels a little counter productive. I think some people would say because it was such a stressful time and I was so busy and I was feeling like that constantly. Adrenaline, you know, it's just underlying and you feel like you can't get it to go away. So sometimes when I feel like that, I'll be honest, my I end up zoning out on my phone and sedating is what I call it through my phone. That's still a temptation. And sometimes I do it. But I also know that when I do that, when I'm in the middle of a crummy time, or just that I'm tired, does it make me feel bad? It makes me feel worse. And I kind of wake up from my stupor and I'm like, Oh, he wasted half an hour doing absolutely nothing. So it's not about being productive, but it's about how do we move our bodies and kind of reset ourselves. So what I make good at during that period of time, which felt I'm sure someone would've been like, What are you doing? Go take a nap. I was so hyped up, I couldn't take a nap. And I just something inside of me knew that I needed to create and I just needed to kind of come back to center. And for me, being connected to nature or being connected to nature through the kitchen because, like, there's nothing really more natural and beautiful than making cheese. You're taking milk and you're turning it into this solid with bacteria and cultures and time. And it's like the scientific process. But there's an art and it's very to me it's a very grounding experience. And so it was so funny during that period how I noticed how different I felt before and after the cheese, just the process of sinking into the cheese and not thinking about the other parts of my life that were imploding and being there with the milk and being there with the pot. Almost like a mindfulness exercise without trying to make it a mindfulness exercise. But I leaned on that to this day, like when where I'm in periods of heavy stress, I actually prioritize the garden more or I prioritize walking more. I've been walking every night after supper and I have lots going on right now. We're gearing up for book launch and I have lots of things happening, but I'm like, if I don't walk, then it throws, you know, I just don't do something that's bringing myself back to my body and bringing myself back to connect with my environment. It makes everything else harder. So I've learned to prioritize those things. And a lot of times people go, How do you have time to do all the things you do? And I'm like, I have to make time because it keeps the rest of my busy life flowing. If I don't get out in the garden or I don't get outside, I'm not creative. I can't think of no ideas. I don't make good podcast episodes. I don't produce the things I need to produce. And so it's it's kind of they're they go together.
Jill Winger More like you have to have those parts you do. They're absolutely necessary to make the rest of it work and they just help you feel better. So these are great ideas to make your home a hub of creation. It's for you and it's also for your kids. And then they have opportunities to work with their hands. And just knowing that working with hands has been proven to reduce stress, it's such an important thing. It's counterintuitive. Yes, you would think you should veg on the couch, but you say, Nope, I'm more mentally engaged and energized even after strenuous activity when I'm filling my life with meaningful things. So, so important for this day and age, both for us and for our kids. Let's talk quick about growing food. I do really love that you've.
Jill Winger Been doing this.
Jill Winger I know that you've struggled with it.
Jill Winger Yeah. Good.
Ginny Yurich Yes, I have struggled.
Jill Winger I'm still struggling.
Ginny Yurich With.
Jill Winger This, though.
Jill Winger It's really an interesting thing. Like horses were your first thing. Yeah, Which what a cool story, Jill, that you bought your first horse have 14.
Ginny Yurich I'm sorry. So sorry. You're fine.
Jill Winger You're fine.
Ginny Yurich I think they found another. Good.
Jill Winger Yeah, you're good. Just take your time. You're good. You're good.
Ginny Yurich So there was another raccoon.
Jill Winger That.
Ginny Yurich This had never happened in a podcast interview. Just so you know, this.
Jill Winger Is something really special, actually.
Ginny Yurich Special anyway.
Jill Winger Yeah. Nice. And you know, well, you know, I think I.
Jill Winger Think about the farm and it seems like once you start to do these different things, you find the things that you really thrive at. Or so maybe some things come more naturally than others. So you started off with the animals, you started off with the horse age 14, which is an amazing story. You buy your own horse and it seems like a lot of the animal things. Well, I don't know. You know, you also have talked about how some animals that, you know, they pass away and it's really hard. So none of it's easy. But, you know, in the garden in particular, there can be so many struggles and you can lose a whole crop and you can be having water shortages and too much shade. And it's there's some intricacies there that maybe are different. Then I've got a cow and I'm getting gobs of milk.
Jill Winger Yeah.
Jill Winger So when we go to the garden, I love that you say don't overthink it. I mean, I think that some of the best advice and I don't know, I'm talking too much because I should ask you a question.
Jill Winger But no, I have learned Well, what.
Jill Winger I've learned for me is that a lot of things don't grow or a lot of things get messed up. But even if a couple of things grow, you still feel really good about it. And if you're dependent on it for your canning and your thing doesn't grow, I feel like you can go to the farmer's market and get the bushel of tomatoes that have a little bit of blight on them or whatever they call it. I don't know. You can get the apples that have fallen to the ground and are a little smashed and you can get them for pretty cheap. So anyway, so you say don't overthink it. Water, weed, watch and don't despise small gardens. Basically, I'm just reading some of your book here. I've got no question, except that I just love that you're really honest about it.
Jill Winger Yeah. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich And I don't know, I think I noticed in the homestead world that some people are more animal prone and some people are more plant prone, and I don't think if one's right or wrong, it's just how you're wired. And I definitely have had an easier time with animals, just has been it has been easier to make it. I mean, like for us we have grass or grassland. So, I mean, I can't imagine anything easier than letting a steer graze for 18 months that I'm like, I get it. However many hundreds of pounds of meat, whereas these tomatoes, I'm having to bake them to grow. So yeah, I think it just depends on where you're at in your journey. But yeah, like even this year we had some more herbicide residual contamination and so my tomatoes and so I thought I had it all taken care of and I noticed the leaves. So, you know, two months and the leaves are curling again and it's just like, Oh, you got to be kidding me. I lost an entire bed of cabbage, too. It was either grasshoppers or cabbage moss. This year. Like I noticed one day there was a few there was some holes in the leaves and I was like, note to self, do something about, you know, spray it down or whatever. And then two days later I come out and there were no leaves left. They were just.
Jill Winger Gone.
Ginny Yurich So I think it's like in that failure idea that you cannot have the good harvests though, without the failures. And I would so much rather see people take that messy, imperfect action and just start instead of sitting back and going, okay, what am I going to do? You know, we try to overprepare, right? We overanalyze. What am I going to do if this happens? What am I gonna do with this happens? I stop doing that, just go start it. And then if there's problems, we'll deal with it later. But even with all my massive garden failures over the years, we still grow a lot of food. So it's amazing how forgiving it can be.
Jill Winger Yeah, and you do you have to do it because you don't have that many opportunities. Yeah, I think like, okay, what if someone puts me in a retirement home when I'm like, you know, 74? I only have you know, I only have a couple a couple more decades left to try this. And then you learn like, okay, I don't really like gray matter. I really like growing that. And I guess in certain places maybe you have more than one growing season, but in places where we're in Michigan, we have one, you know, one shot. So you got to do it. You got to try and then you learn in, don't overthink it. Put things in the ground. Had all sorts of ways of dealing with the food after so that you could preserve it. Freezing canning, dehydrating salt ferments a lot of amazing ideas in there. But I like what you said. I think what you you said what I was getting at, which is that when you do these different things like cooking at home or working with your hands, you do start to find what your inclination is or what maybe works for your particular area. Yeah. And so that's why it's important not to specialize. And you talk about that really, it's in a different section. It's about working with your hands. But in the garden, the same thing. When you specialize, you're missing out on all these other things that you possibly could be learning, even if you're learning that you don't like that part.
Jill Winger Yeah.
Jill Winger Like when you talk about your milk jars in the spring, you're playing Tetris because the cows are producing so much milk. And the videos. Jill The videos of the cows grazing in the grasslands are some of my favorite videos I've ever seen. Yeah. So I just think it's important that people know that you still do the things that don't come quite as easily. And that they still, like you said, they still produce some food.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. And here's here's an interesting side note to that about the things that don't come easily. As I have progressed, I've been homesteading, excuse me, for well over a decade now. And I think when we whenever we as humans start something new, our goal is always to arrive, right, to get to the thing, to figure, I just want to figure this out and be good at it. Here's what I've noticed happen in myself. There's a lot of homestead skills now that feel second nature. Not to say that I still don't struggle, but like starting seeds every year I have that down to a science. It's usually pretty, pretty simple. And, you know, making basic starter bread, I kind of have that figured out. And you're roasting a chicken. Been there, done that. I noticed a couple of years ago I started to get bored with that because I was doing the same old things over and over. Not that they were bad, not that I'm going to quit doing them, but I had this very clear craving. I'm like, You need a challenge. You need to mix this up. And so even with in my crazy old fashioned life, I find myself, I am still the happiest when I'm on the edge of not knowing much about the new thing I'm tackling like I now have learned. Well, at the beginning, that was always the state I was in. And I've learned to crave that state because I love what comes when I'm figuring it out, when I'm bumbling through the wins that I have. And so now I consciously seek that out, even as I have not mastered. That's an arrogant word, but I have, you know, been there, done that and a lot of these homestead skills. I'm like, okay, now how can I get better at this? How can I understand this more thoroughly? How can I use 100% whole wheat in my starter bread instead of white flour? How can I become more permaculture minded and actually nurture the soil and instead of just grow tomatoes? So I think we always need to be pushing up to that next level, whatever that may be, because that's I think it just keeps us a lot sharper and happier.
Jill Winger Mm hmm. And that's what this lifestyle affords. Yes. The vacuum robot doesn't give you a next level, right? You know, it just ends. So I think that that's a huge component of it and a really important part to know that with nature, there's always something new to learn. And with animals and gardens and cooking. And you can always learn something new. You can always stretch yourself. Let's wrap up here with parenting.
Jill Winger Yeah.
Jill Winger Because this is a really big one. And you talk about questions and this is something that I've questioned. Why are we putting kids in school for so much time? Why are we spending so much time on academics? The things that we question, where did this come from? And I was in the classroom for a while as a teacher. And so I had a little bit of insight to know that no one really knows where it comes from, actually. And these legislative initiatives get passed down, it felt like from the heavens. Yeah. Even as an administrator, I was it's like, well, who's saying that? The kids have to know that? Why? Why does every single kid have to pass algebra to you in order to graduate high school? Why? And no one could answer it, even as that upper level administrator who knows where to cover. I don't know. And this is a big thing that goes hand in hand a little bit with old fashioned things because kids used to play more.
Jill Winger Yeah. Yes, they used.
Jill Winger To risk.
Ginny Yurich More. Yes. Yes, they used to be. And they used to have a lot more adult less time, adult free time, which our culture does not afford that at all. And I had to be careful. I had to be really careful with that chapter, because I know that everyone parents differently. And there's always already a lot of shame heaped on parents. And so I was trying to be mindful of that. But we have gone so far in our urge to try to make our kids as successful as possible and as safe as possible. Those aren't bad desires, but we've taken it to such an extreme. They're actually, I think, doing the opposite. We're actually harming our kids in a sense. Yeah, and that's hard for people to hear. I've had people some people get really angry when I have alluded to that, and I know that parenting is a it's a touchy topic. But what I've noticed it, especially as you kind of look at historical parenting and not all of the ways we have raised our kids through that millennia has been great. Like there's some things you have to be like, I'm going to leave that in the past. But kids had a lot more autonomy and a lot more free time. What happens when they have those things? I mean, you know this you have such a beautiful library of parenting information on your podcast that they develop into the humans they're meant to be, and they get to become more competent and they get to become more competent and they get to learn independence. And it really, more than anything, strengthens them into adulthood in ways that, you know, we're seeing a lot of kids failure to launch. We're seeing a lot of kids now that don't want to, you know, they get to the 18 or whatever. They can't leave home. They don't want to drive. They don't want to like keep moving forward into their own life and their own adventures. And I think a big part of that is we just kind of smoosh them for so long. And so I think about how what old fashioned ways, you know, we can use, what methods we could use to help reignite that in our modern culture.
Jill Winger Yes, it's really important information. And I think it's really tricky because, like you said, the messaging has to come across the right way. And I've struggled over the years, too. It's the but the message is a message of hope.
Jill Winger Yes.
Jill Winger Like, Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. Hey, grandparent. Yes. Hey, daycare worker. In daycare owner you can do less and gain more. Yes, that's the message. It's a message of not burdening someone with more things. It's a message of No, no. You can step back. Yes. Especially as a kid get older. Not when they're two.
Jill Winger Exactly. Yeah.
Jill Winger In the you know, they can't know to not run in the street, but as they get a little bit older. So you say the question is, how do we facilitate healthy free play, which I think is a question that a lot of people would ask, like, well, how do I do this and how do I get my kid to play more? In your answer is do as little as possible.
Jill Winger Yeah. Yes.
Ginny Yurich And as an overachiever personality, that was hard for me as a young mom to learn that, like, that was not natural to me to be like, Nope, let them figure it out. But so much, especially now, I have a 13, a ten and a seven year old now. So my kids are a little older. They're extremely like they're sort of independent sometimes. Like I'm like, Where are my children? I haven't seen them for hours and like, but I have enough confidence to know that, like, I trust their judgment like I know well enough and every kid's different. So you have to feel that out as a parent. But I'm like, they make generally pretty good choices, pretty solid choices, just because we've practiced this.
Jill Winger What my gosh.
Ginny Yurich What was I going to say to that?
Jill Winger Well, that's a huge message of hope, though. And I think that's the point, which is that if we're always feeling the time, if we're always directing it as adults, you're always going to have to direct it. And I think that when kids are little, we are desperate for times like you're talking about, like a parent who has kids that are five and under, even eight and under might say, Why did you have hours where your kids are doing things that hours and you trust them and they're growing and they're thriving? That is what all the toy companies are promising. That's what all the screen companies are promising. And it just takes a bit of time of not directing it so that they can learn how to do it. And in time it's better for everyone.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. And like you said, it is a message of hope, especially when I see the moms around me who are trying to live up to societal expectations in terms of a million activities and then you never make. You don't want the kid to ever feel bored. I feel like that's a big thing. If you're a good mom, you never let your kids so bored. And I'm like, Oh no, we are. I love boredom. Boredom is beautiful. And so if you can step aside from that, which is hard because there's a lot of mom guilt from other moms is like, Oh, you're not doing enough and you're not facilitating enough play. So if you can push against that, you got to be a little countercultural there. It gives me so much more peace and it takes the strain off of me because really, like when I think back to my childhood, my best times of playing, I'm sorry. I mean, you can probably relate to this as well. My best times of playing were not when an adult was facilitating like it was. It was like, come on, like, get out of here. You guys. Like, leave us alone. Like, it was the best times. We were alone and there was a little bit of adventure. We were, you know, back in the pilot, we had railroad tracks behind our house that were no longer used. We'd be on the railroad tracks. There's just like this kid gang. And no, none of the adults are back there. And like, that's the stuff I remember. It wasn't, you know, a game where our adult was, like, telling us what to do and stuff.
Jill Winger Every once in a while. Yeah. It's not that. No, not at all.
Ginny Yurich And so I think just trying to remember that and, and reproduce, that's really important.
Jill Winger And to know that that really it's helpful for kids for their long term life success. No one is helped by being told what to do all the time because then when someone's not, they're telling you what to do, you're totally lost. And so I think in this area, I like your premise of just has two questions. Ask the questions like, I put out this quote the other day. It's from John Taylor Gatto. He says that it only takes 100 hours for kids to become functionally literate. And then people are like, well, I don't want my kid to be at a second grade level forever. And it's like, No, no, it's not that. It's not that. It's like if it only takes 100 hours. So for our youngest kid, Jill, we didn't do the reading program. And guess what? She can read. Yes, but she's seven. She's seven. We just walk through a museum and it was about lighthouses and she's reading every sign.
Ginny Yurich That's amazing.
Jill Winger To me.
Jill Winger And so you got to ask the questions like, do we really have to spend the first three years of, you know, five, six and seven sitting at a desk? Yeah. In order to learn how to read. Do we have to? Maybe not.
Jill Winger No. And that's.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, those questions are so important.
Jill Winger So, yeah.
Jill Winger It's about asking the questions because you can have a different life. You can have the life that you want. And so this importance of play is in the book Unconventional parenting you talk about. And you also have this thing that says Our culture tells us our children are frail and weak. But I thought that was really funny because truth be told, were the ones who are frail and weak.
Jill Winger Yes, they are not.
Ginny Yurich They are not. Yeah, they're capable of so much more both in like, you know, mentally like they're they're emotionally capable. Generally. Again, all children are different. So that's my caveat. But that way and also physically, then we think.
Jill Winger They can fall down and they'll be fine.
Ginny Yurich They'll be okay.
Jill Winger In a way.
Jill Winger Better balance. They have these Katie Bowman calls them fast twitch muscles. Yes. That makes it so that they can, like, move really quick when we're out in the in nature with our kids. I am way behind all of the things that they can do. So I like that you push back on that, too. And I like that you have this section about the different kinds of risks. It came from someone I can't remember the name, but there are really a lot of risks high speed, hazardous tools, dangerous locations, roughhousing and disappearing. Being by yourself.
Jill Winger Yes. Yes.
Jill Winger So awesome things there. We're running out of time. But you say, look, if we do these things and in this fits perfectly with this conversation about children, you say be ready for resistance.
Jill Winger Mm hmm. Yes.
Jill Winger What should we do in order to prepare for the resistance?
Ginny Yurich Yeah. So I got that aid, that term from one of my favorite books, The War of Art, by Steven Brasfield. And I read that book over and over again, and it changed my life. And I think the biggest thing we can do is and what he says is, I mean, a bunch of this, but I'm going to paraphrase it that the amateur expects that if they do the thing long enough, the resistance or the inner turmoil, they feel that's like, don't do this, just go read a book or watch Netflix. Actually, it's usually really the resistance says read a book. Usually it says, Go scroll on your phone or watch Netflix. Right? So go. Just go zone out. Don't do the hard thing. It's going to be uncomfortable. The amateur expects that to go away. The professional. The professional artist. The professional who you meaning who who has committed to their passion. They know it doesn't ever go away. You just learn to feel that and do it anyway. And I think that that's some of the best advice I've ever heard in life and in homesteading and in parenting or cooking is you're going to feel the pushback internally, externally, people around us still, it's a lot less, but they'll still make little comments. And I still like when as I was writing this book, like every day I would sit down to write. I would have a sense of dread, that artistic dread of like, What if I can't do it today? What if I never get this chapter? What if these words don't come together? But as I would push through that it get really good and I would start to get the dopamine and I start to get excited and the words would come. And so just learning to feel it and be okay with feeling it and Keep On Truckin, I think is one of the most important old fashioned skills we can develop.
Jill Winger Jill I love the book. Old fashioned on purpose, cultivating a slower and more joyful life. I'm going to butcher that old fashioned on purpose, cultivating a slower, more joyful life. It is available now. By the time this podcast comes out, it is available. It's a great one to get for yourself. It's a great one to get for your friends. You say it's for those willing to ask bold questions of the world I love. I love how you started it. You start it there and you end it with peace, love and and I'm going to leave it a blank because I loved how you ended it. So people have to grab it. For those willing to ask more questions of the world peace, love and people are going to have to get the.
Jill Winger Book for that.
Jill Winger Phenomenal ending. Jill, I loved it from start to finish. Well done.
Ginny Yurich Thank you, friend. You are the best at digging into books. I don't know anyone who does book reviews and conversations as good.
Jill Winger As you do. So thank you for.
Jill Winger That as well. And I love that there's pictures in here I wasn't expecting. That is a really cool set of color photos in the middle. And they're just like these sort of behind the scenes piles of potatoes and your stacks of canning jars and the soda fountain. And so just really inspiring to see those. I absolutely adored it. And I'm so excited that you wrote it.
Ginny Yurich Thank you. Me too. It feels good to have it finally out in the world doing doing what it needs to do. So it feels good.
Jill Winger Yeah. We can all go be reverse pioneers. I love it. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Jill. I always enjoy our time together. There is a thing that you said in our last podcast that went viral. And for those Instagrammers.
Jill Winger Yeah, I know, though. It's so fun.
Ginny Yurich And they're like, Jill, this is your voice. I'm like, Yes, I know.
Jill Winger Cool.
Jill Winger That is.
Jill Winger Me. Yes, Yes.
Jill Winger Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
Ginny Yurich Thank you.
