J & J Homestead

Sometimes you don’t realize how much you’ve learned until someone asks you to teach it.

A couple of days ago, a wonderful lady reached out to me with a question that completely caught me off guard. She asked if we would be open to hosting a small group of military families who are interested in learning more about homesteading.

My first thought was:

What in the world could we possibly teach them?

I immediately started thinking about all the things we don’t know. We aren’t experts. We’re still learning. We still make mistakes. There are still plenty of days when something happens around the homestead and we’re standing there trying to figure out what to do next.

But then I started thinking about everything we do know.

And goodness.

We’ve learned a lot.

You Don’t Notice the Skills You’re Building While You’re Building Them

That’s the funny thing about learning to homestead. There isn’t necessarily a moment when someone hands you a certificate and says, “Congratulations! You officially know what you’re doing.”

Instead, you learn little pieces at a time.

You solve one problem.

Then another.

You make a mistake and figure out how to fix it.

You read. You research. You ask questions. You try something. Sometimes it works beautifully. Sometimes it absolutely does not.

Then one day you look around and realize that all those little lessons have turned into actual knowledge.

And maybe even a few superpowers.

Our Homesteading Superpowers

When we first started this journey, there were so many things we didn’t know how to do.

Today, there are things that have simply become part of our everyday lives.

We Learned Beekeeping

We’ve experienced the ups and downs of beekeeping — thankfully, mostly ups!

We’ve learned about caring for hives, feeding bees, watching for problems, managing colonies through the seasons, catching a swarm, harvesting honey, and preparing our bees for winter.

There is always more to learn with bees. They have a remarkable way of keeping you humble.

But somewhere along the way, “learning about bees” turned into being beekeepers.

That’s pretty amazing when you stop and think about it.

We Learned to Raise Poultry

We’ve raised chickens.

We’ve kept ducks.

We’ve added turkeys.

And each one has taught us something different.

We’ve learned about housing, feed, predators, injuries, illness, egg production, broodiness, integrating new birds, weather challenges, and the sometimes complicated social dynamics of a flock.

We’ve also gone through the entire meat bird experience — from bringing home tiny chicks to raising them responsibly and ultimately processing them for food.

That was another huge learning experience.

When you do these things every day, they begin to feel ordinary.

But they’re not.

They’re skills.

We Learned to Grow and Preserve Food

Then there’s the garden.

Gardening has probably taught us as many lessons in patience as anything else on the homestead.

We’ve learned what grows well for us, what doesn’t, how to deal with pests, how to work with our seasons, when to plant, when to harvest, and how quickly zucchini can go from “Oh, look! Our first zucchini!” to “What are we going to do with all of these zucchini?”

We’ve also learned about food preservation.

Growing food is one skill.

Knowing how to preserve that harvest so it can feed your family later is another.

Each season teaches us something new, and each year we become a little more capable than we were the year before.

We Learned How to Start a Homestead Business

Then there is something I almost completely overlooked when thinking about what we could share with these families.

We built a business.

We went through the process of turning an idea into J & J Homestead.

We’ve learned about starting a business, opening and operating our farmstand, pricing products, tracking inventory, accepting payments, understanding regulations, marketing what we produce, creating a website, using social media, communicating with customers, and figuring out what people actually want to buy.

We’ve learned how to take things we grow, raise, bake, harvest, and create and turn them into products that people in our community genuinely enjoy.

That didn’t happen overnight.

It happened one lesson at a time.

The Things You Learn Become Your Superpowers

The more I thought about this invitation, the more excited I became.

Because I realized something important.

Life gives us superpowers along the way.

They don’t necessarily feel like superpowers when we’re learning them.

When you’re standing in a chicken coop trying to figure out what’s wrong with a hen, it doesn’t feel like you’re developing a valuable skill.

When you’re staring into a beehive trying to determine whether everything looks right, it doesn’t feel particularly impressive.

When you’re trying to figure out why your tomatoes aren’t producing, how to preserve a giant harvest, what paperwork you need for your business, or how much to charge for something at the farmstand, it certainly doesn’t feel like you’re becoming an expert at anything.

You’re just trying to figure it out.

But that’s exactly how knowledge is built.

One problem.

One solution.

One mistake.

One success.

One season at a time.

Give Yourself Credit for What You’ve Learned

I think that’s the lesson I’m taking from all of this.

We need to give ourselves more credit.

Think about who you were five years ago.

What do you know today that version of you didn’t know?

What can you do now without thinking twice that once felt intimidating?

Maybe you know how to grow tomatoes.

Maybe you can bake bread from scratch.

Maybe you can identify when one of your chickens isn’t feeling well simply by watching the way she walks across the run.

Maybe you can preserve a garden harvest, split a beehive, process a chicken, build a fence, start seeds, make jam, raise a turkey, run a farmstand, or start a small business.

Maybe your skills have absolutely nothing to do with homesteading.

The point is the same.

Give yourself credit for the things life has taught you.

We spend so much time looking ahead at everything we still want to learn that sometimes we forget to turn around and look at how far we’ve already come.

Knowledge Becomes Even More Valuable When You Share It

And perhaps this is the part I’m most excited about.

We get to share it.

All of those mistakes suddenly have another purpose.

All of those lessons become useful to someone else.

If something we learned the hard way can make someone else’s journey a little easier, then that experience becomes even more valuable.

That’s one of the reasons education has become such an important part of what we want J & J Homestead to be.

Yes, we love our animals.

We love our bees.

We love growing food.

We love the farmstand.

We love baking and creating things for our community.

But increasingly, I realize that one of the most meaningful things we can grow here might be knowledge.

And unlike tomatoes, eggs, honey, or cookies, knowledge doesn’t disappear when you give some of it away.

It multiplies.

From Learning to Teaching

So when this wonderful opportunity was first presented to me, my immediate reaction was to wonder what we could possibly offer.

Now?

I can’t wait.

I can’t wait to talk about the bees.

I can’t wait to introduce people to the chickens and turkeys.

I can’t wait to talk about gardening and preserving food.

I can’t wait to explain what we’ve learned about raising meat birds.

I can’t wait to share what it took to turn our homestead into a small business.

And perhaps most importantly, I can’t wait to talk about all the things we got wrong along the way.

Because that’s homesteading.

You don’t have to know everything before you begin.

You simply have to be willing to learn.

And someday, without even realizing when it happened, you may discover that the things you once struggled to learn are now the things someone else is asking you to teach.

That’s a pretty incredible feeling.

So today, I’m reminding myself — and maybe you need the reminder too:

Give yourself credit.

Give yourself credit for the mistakes you figured out.

Give yourself credit for the skills you developed.

Give yourself credit for the problems you learned to solve.

Give yourself credit for every time you didn’t know the answer but found it anyway.

Those lessons become part of who you are.

They’re the superpowers life gives us along the way.

And the really beautiful part?

We get to pass them on.