Welcome to the Two Acre Homestead. Come along with us on our journey from a small suburban homestead lifestyle to our new lifestyle homesteading in the rural countryside of Southern Arizona. We'll share with you our tips, tricks, successes and failures from both our past suburban lifestyle to our new rural lifestyle all on the Two Acre Homestead.
Welcome back to The Two Acre Homestead. I'm your host, Lisa. So last week, we did an introduction. And I gave you guys the background story of how we kind of, we kind of really fell into homesteading. And it wasn't something that we were looking to do. But we kind of fell into it because of just that seed that had been planted from my grandfather. Growing up as a young girl, he taught me how to garden and he taught me a lot of good things about gardening and how, if you garden right, and you take care of your soil, it'll take care of you. And you don't have to work so hard for it to take care of you. Those fond memories never left me. They left me for a little bit. But that seed needed to stay in the ground for a little bit before it germinated. And it germ germinated in my 30s.
But that is not the why we chose to homestead. That's just how we got into it. So today I'm going to talk to you about the why we chose homesteading as our lifestyle. Prior to this, I had explained to you that my husband and I, we you know graduated, we you know, we're educated people, we lived a fabulous life, we you know, had good careers, we traveled a lot, learned different languages, we did a lot of stuff we were we were very, very active. And when that seeds started developing inside of me that I wanted to start gardening and growing my own food. What I failed to tell you is at the same time that that was happening, there was a crisis going crisis going on in our household. The crisis was one of health. In 2014, going into the year 2015, my husband started having serious digestive issues. He would just be curled up in the fetal position with digestive problems. And we couldn't figure out what what was going on. So we kept going back and forth to the doctors. And they would just tell us ambiguously Oh, you know, he just, it felt like they were almost making it up. And like they would say, Oh, he has IBS, you know, irritable bowel syndrome. Okay, well, what's causing this? They couldn't answer it. There was no definitive, you know, this is his problem. You know, stay away from this food, or you know, nothing, just take these pills, and they'll make you feel better and go have a good life. The answers that we were getting from the medical community at that time was not satisfactory. At the same time, the other crisis that we were having was with my health as well. And that was I was constantly running on fatigue. I, it just I was constantly either in pain, or just constantly tired. Had no energy, and when I did have energy, I would garden. And it just seemed like it would just wipe me out. So I decided to take a step back actually in 2015 because I thought, you know, maybe I'm doing too much. Maybe I'm, you know, burning the candle at both ends. You know, I'm trying to work, I was busy with my ministry, and also gardening at the same time and hiking and you know, physically just really active. And so I decided to take a step back from everything. But I still was constantly dealing with fatigue and pain. And my doctors did not have an answer for me at all. All they would say is we think you have chronic fatigue syndrome. And that was that was their answer. And what causes it, nothing. They, you know, again, take this medication, you'll feel fine, you'll feel better, I felt worse. And I felt more tired.
So I stopped taking the medication, started looking at both my husband and I, we started looking at our food, because we noticed something that was becoming a pattern and that was when we ate exclusively from our gardens, we seemed to feel better. But when we started incorporating, you know, the lifestyle that we had grown so accustomed to, which was you know, every Friday night, we'd go out to eat, you know, I that was just like a given Friday, Saturday and Sunday we'd go you know, to family, you know, we go hang out with our family. But Friday and Saturday was a given we were never eat, we were never at home and we never ate at home. So when we started dialing that back, and started eating more food that we produced, we started physically feeling better, and back to our old selves again.
So what we discovered is the dietary problem that my husband had, at first we thought it was wheat gluten. Because when he would eat things that had like any sort of bread, any sort of wheat gluten, it seemed like it really bothered him. But what we didn't connect was that when he would eat those kinds of foods, guess what it had on it, butter. We never connected that dot until a little bit later, when we started taking out milk and any milk product. And lo and behold, that is what my husband's problem was. He could not process highly pasteurized milk products. So that is to say he's lactose intolerant.
For myself, what I discovered is sugar. Now I'm not diabetic, thankfully. But when I consume products that are high in sugar, processed sugar, I should say, it seems to cause a reaction in my body of inflammation. I get joint problems really, really quickly. And it makes me fatigued. Now if I eat something that has organic sugar, something that I've made, I don't seem to have a problem. But if it's something that's processed, like corn processed, you know, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, any of those processed sugars, my body immediately goes into shutdown mode.
So as we are figuring this out, all through the year of 2015, we started realizing the seriousness of homesteading and that this really was more than just about oh, you know, it's nice to grow, you know, a few vegetables here and there and, and so forth. We started realizing the seriousness of being able to cook from home from scratch, and the necessity to grow as much food as we possibly could. And that is why to this day, we homestead is because our health we realize our bodies depend on that good nutritious food that we are able to produce ourselves.
Let me tell you, it was quite a lifestyle change for us. Because we were so immersed in the lifestyle that we had lived for years, and the lifestyle that we were taught as children, you know, you, you grow up, you get good jobs, you live these fantastic lives...for us, we chose at that time not to have children, we wanted to travel and we have no regrets on the travel part. We absolutely love the fact that we've gotten to travel, we've gotten to do a lot in our ministry, we've got to help other people, in other cultures, learn other cultures, learn other languages. It's a big world out there. And we are so happy that we had that opportunity to do that. But we are equally happy with the lifestyle that we have chosen to live today. Because we are able to enjoy our lives now a lot better. We don't have the stress that we did back then. But it is a lifestyle change. And it's a change in mentality. And even to this day, we've been homesteading now since 2014. And even today, as of the recording of this video, we are now in the year 2022. And we still struggle with some choices, because there are some times where we want to go out to eat and there are some times we do. It's hard. It is a hard lifestyle that we've chosen. But every time it gets a little bit hard, we always reflect on why we chose this lifestyle to begin with. And as soon as we start thinking about the why, and we start looking back at those years, why we felt so terrible. And you know, I couldn't...there were some days I just couldn't I'd have to call in sick, I couldn't get out of bed. It's because our health. Because of what we were putting in our bodies. And now that we're healthy, we feel good. Why would we ever want to go back?
So that's our why. You may have a different reason why. I don't know. But I would love to hear the reason why you've chosen to homestead if that's something that you've been doing for a long time as well.
Be sure to visit our homestead on Instagram because we do post pictures from time to time we don't post them all the time. But we do post pictures and we are trying to stay up on our Instagram account. You can find us on Instagram @thetwoacrehomestead. I'd love to hear why you are homesteading or why you want to homestead.
The next episode we are going to be talking about how to get started homesteading. Hopefully you've heard this podcast if you've been sitting on the fence, and you've been thinking I would like to homestead I'd like to live that lifestyle. And you're just trying to think how in the world do I get started homesteading? Where do I begin? Do I start gardening? Do I keep chickens? Do I start with you know tons of acreage, or can I just start in my little apartment balcony or my little backyard? How do you get started in this lifestyle? We've got some advice, some tips and tricks on how to get started. So I hope you join me for the next podcast on getting started as a homesteader. Until next time. I hope that all is well in your world and be safe out there.