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Full Transcript:

Note: This is an automated transcript and misspells or grammar errors may be present.

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show to equip parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom and I’m.

Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our eight kids Biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible.

We can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting in the following. Hey, everyone. Hey, guys. Welcome back to the podcast.

We have an interesting topic today. There’s a lot going on in the world, so we thought that we would just dive in here and apply the problem of mRNA. Whoa. I said a really big word right there. And what it’s potentially going to be doing in our food supply, I’ll just call it food supply in the future and how that affects parenting.

Yeah, it’s interesting topic. You know, sometimes we feel led to talk about certain things and sometimes there’s current conversations we’ve had. I would say this has been an ongoing conversation for a while, for a couple of years in our family. But as we’re seeing how things unfold, the potentiality of what’s real and what the real plans seem to be of what I would call the enemy in the world, the people who are trying to do devious things and think they’re doing a good thing maybe, but actually hurting the population, hurting citizens.

They’re definitely deceived by the the true deceiver. Right. That the prince of the air, as the Bible calls him. And he’s a schemer. Right. And he’s deceived people. And and so, anyway, we’re going to talk about a lot of that. So be ready for the coming food corruption as today one of today’s topics.

But there’s going to be practical insights in here, too, on some action lists, no matter where you live, what you’re doing, what your resources are that you can do, there are things everybody can do and being more prepared for. I would say this attack on our food supply or increased attack, as has already been some attacks and so forth. So I think that’s really important.

And when Isaac says like no matter where you live, just to even make that a bigger category for you guys to think on, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, but it also like it doesn’t matter if you’re on land or in an apartment or in a suburb. Right? We’re going to talk about some things that are going to be potentially like immediate things that you could potentially start working on or get inspired to grow in that are going to help you in the future. And I think that this is a necessary thing that all people take responsibility for.

And you’ve heard us say many times, we really believe it’s important, more important than ever with the speed of change today to make proactive decisions versus reactive decisions when things are already really challenging. And so there is time. That’s the good news. There’s time right now to do things, to take action and so forth. And it’s really important to do that. You know, the Bible says not to fear over and over and over again. The only thing God says to to fear is him. And that’s a different kind of fear. That’s a respect for his authority in our lives and power and love and all those things. Right. And or for him. So that is a good fear. But the dread, fear, we’re not supposed to fear anything in this world. But I’ll tell you, it’s a it’s really hard to not fear something if we don’t take action. See, I find it much easier to trust God when I’m also taking action and wisdom. It’s much easier. So I think that’s important. So this isn’t a fear based conversation that we’re not encouraging anybody to take actions in fear. If there weren’t clear evidence of the trend of the world going the way it is, there’s no way we would be talking about this or even really thinking about this.

Yeah, I’m going to actually bring up a verse that we were going to talk about a little later, but I think that it’s good to put it at the very beginning of this podcast. It’s in Matthew chapter ten, verse 16 says, Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. And then it just continues on. I would encourage you guys to read that entire section where it says, Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in synagogues and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It just continues. Right? And this is important. Like at the end of that chapter, it also says in verse 24, A disciple is not above his teacher nor a servant above his master. And when I when I read scriptures that talk about teachers and disciples, I first and foremost think about myself in a teaching role with my children or who are my disciples. And so for us, running a parenting podcast like this, this is a very relevant issue for two very important reasons. One, as parents, we need to feed our kids, right? We need to nurture their bodies and take care of them and provide for them.

The Bible says that it’s worse for an unbeliever than for a man not to provide for his family. And so think about the importance of providing food. Then there’s also this element of as a teacher being responsible for teaching and training and discipling your children up so that they’re equipped for the world that they launch into. And the truth is, is that we know that the world is going to get weirder and weirder as things go on. And so here we are on Courageous Parenting podcast. We want to talk about this very important thing that is happening worldwide. Okay? This is a worldwide problem and it’s going to continue to be something. And and if I could be really candid with you, I think. That there were even signs of this from maybe a less destructive. Some people might debate that. But I even think about just antibiotics being in meat and pesticides in in different things, buying organic versus not buying organic. There have been many things that have been potential teratogens that could then hurt our health over the years. And so talking about mRNA, for example, it’s not like there haven’t been other things in the past. I think the.

Difference is so true. But the difference is one is a capitalism move where it’s more efficient, cost effective, and all these things, if I put these injections into cows and things like that, but now it seems to be turning into how can I influence the end person on purpose? How can I influence humanity by putting things in animals? And I think that’s a whole different step.

Yeah. And the whole goal is to get a technology inside humans, right? That can connects with your cells and can eventually change DNA, and it messes with genetics. And we’re not going to go into all of the scope of what mRNA is. That is your responsibility to do that research. But we are talking about this important issue. Just because we as Christian parents need to have our eyes wide open. Right? It literally said that we are sheep in the midst of wolves. Be wise as serpents. Okay? But serpent symbolizes the devil. It symbolizes Satan. And so this literally gives us a bird’s eye view into how God is characterizing him. He’s he’s wise and crafty, actually. And we need to be as wise as him in the sense of being aware of what his schemes are and being trying to be a step ahead like Isaac was talking about. Like we want to equip you guys to be proactive versus reactive. So even if we are coming to you maybe a little bit earlier than when you might be experiencing the actual pain point of food corruption, we hope that today is going to inspire, motivate and equip you to start the process now because you really need to.

And it’s a really important to understand what’s coming is to look what people who have influence and have already done things are doing, like the World Economic Forum and Bill Gates and all these different people, and there is a drive to put money in food. And it’s not just about the money, it’s the motive behind it. Because what else does that mean that they might put in the food, too, that we don’t even know about if they’re trying to influence and change the DNA of humans for whatever reason and these different things. And so, you know, regardless of what the motivations are, de-population or whatever, I don’t know. We’re not the experts on that stuff. But what we do know is what we can see and what what has already been done and what.

They openly admit and apologetically as well. Right.

So we have to look at that and we have to look at what that means. And that means there might come a time where you can’t trust the grocery store. Some of you might even feeling that way right now. And so if that’s the case, then there might be some proactive actions you need to start taking before you really, really can’t trust the grocery store and those kinds of things. And so we’re going to go through four points that I think will be really helpful. Yeah.

So on the on this topic, just so you guys know, we’re not going to be talking all about mRNA. There’s also this element of how food has just gotten expensive. And so there’s this element of when Isaac said, maybe you don’t trust the grocery store already. I’ll be honest with you. Like, I’ve been trying my best without making an idol out of it, mind you, to vote with my dollar and with more and more companies becoming woke, I if I have a choice to give my money to a company that’s woke that hates me and everything I stand for and hates my children, or give my money to a company that does not that is not woke, I would much rather give my money to them. And so sometimes, like there have been a few times where I’ve walked into the store and I’ve literally been like, I don’t I don’t know what that company stands for. I don’t have the time to stand here in the grocery store and Google every single company. And so there is an element of distrust even in the grocery store in regards to that. Right. And so and our intentions are to love our families. Well, to be wise as serpents, innocent as doves, to steward our finances well, because God also calls us to that.

But again, at the end of the day, I want to remind you that even when you’re struggling with all those things, you can still have the peace of God and you can let those things go knowing you can walk in the grace of Jesus Christ because he died on the cross and he he doesn’t expect us to be doing everything perfectly. That’s impossible. It’s impossible. But do we just go, Oh, it’s impossible. And then not even try? Of course not. We we should be trying. And so when I look at scriptures like this and I go, be wise as serpents, it means I do need to be alert. I do need to care actually a little bit about this. And because I do, that’s going to influence what the next steps are that I take. It’s going to influence if I work hard at trying to grow my own vegetables or not. It influences what I’m going to teach my kids and what skills they’re actually going to launch from my home. Having all of those things are so important to parenting today.

Well, also might influence what we spend money on. And obviously in a lot of families, there’s a finite budget, there’s a finite amount of money. So then instead of saying no to some of these, is it possible to say yes because you say no to some other things or you make adjustments in your system or how you.

It’s a priorities thing, really. I mean, a lot of it you have to brainstorm and make your it’s like us when we make our lists on our date night and we’ll just talk about like, okay, what are the things that we need on the property, what are the things that we want, Right? Because those are two very different things. And then what are the things that our family actually needs to be equipped in and what’s going to be the next big investment? Right. And that is something that is going to look different from family to family. But again, you have to use wisdom and go to the Lord for that guidance. Right. But it’s important that we as Christians are able to have this conversation where we can, as iron sharpens iron, pull out. These things like that are big issues in the world today. Bring them down to the family level and talk about why it’s so important that we are aware of what’s going on.

Well, hey, we’re about to go into our points, but really want to thank you for being part of the 10 million legacies movement. Go to be courageous ministry.org for all the free stuff, including notes and scriptures and all that about this podcast. Also all the courses, the coffee that supports the ministry, incredible coffee, the app community for deeper Christian community and access, which is so good. And the kids podcast is in there too. All of that stuff can be found there. We really one of the things I think and Angie think this as well is that is impacted people of anything the ministry does. Obviously the podcast is huge numbers of people. The podcast is number one in terms of how many people have been impacted so far. But the thing that has had the deepest lasting impact, lasting, real deep change in legacies, families and their legacies, the Parenting Mentor program. And so go to be courageous ministry.org to check that out because we just firmly believe something special happened with that. And it really is so relevant. It’s even more relevant today than when we first made it for what’s happening around the world. Yes. Okay.

Okay. So let’s talk about this. The first point that we have with you guys is to build a local network might not be what you were thinking, we would say. Right. They’re probably thinking, oh, they’re going to tell us that we need to move to land and we need to farm and we need to know we’re going to say build a local network. Remember, we said these are things that you can do from anywhere, by the way or not.

Even if you were the farmer. It’s really hard to do everything well on one farm, right? So even if you had that, you would still need to build a local network, and if things get really tough, then you’re going to want to be able to help each other too. And so it’s really important. But yeah, build your local network. Even if you’re in that apartment or wherever you’re living, you know, where can you get eggs from, for example? That’s not the grocery store. Where can you get milk, meat, vegetables, grains, all of those things, right? And it’s really good not to just have the source, not to just know of them, but it’s important to spend money with them because that builds a credibility that you’re somebody that is going to help them. Right. And so it’s not like you have this list, okay, Things get bad. Now I’m going to contact them if you do that. They’re already busy. Everything’s spoken for. Nothing for you. Yeah, right. So it’s important that we’re actually using this network or buying their produce or whatever it is, and then we’re actually building relationships with them too. Relationships are key.

Yeah. So, you know, on that topic, you know, we were talking about food corruption. We mentioned mRNA, we mentioned woke companies and we mentioned slightly. But I just want to say it again, the price of foods out there, you mentioned eggs and finding a place where you could get eggs. That’s not the grocery store there, depending on what season we’ve been in of this whole great reset, I’m just going to say it in the last three and a half years, depending on the season.

I would call it, we’re in the great transition.

Yes. So in the great transition, there’s been seasons, right? There was a pandemic. And then anyway, I don’t need to go into all of it. The whole point is, is right. Different times there have been shortages on different things. There’s been no way to get ibuprofen or vitamin C anywhere online. There’s been times where, oh, you’re limited to one dozen eggs per customer. Doesn’t matter if you have nine kids. Oh, toilet paper. Right. There was the whole toilet paper. Paper towel crisis that happened. That was a real memorable one. And, you know, now we’re in this season where the eggs are out, the roof expensive. Oh, and then, of course, we can’t forget baby formula. And that’s just been, I would say, of all of them, the saddest in my mind, the most deadly of them all. And there’s there’s so much that we could talk about regarding this, but I’m bringing it up because that is a corruption in and of itself when things become too expensive or they’re not available. And so you’ve got that battle and then you have the battle of woke companies and wanting to vote with your dollar, and then you have the battle of potentially harmful things being injected in your food or processed with your food. You mentioned cereal as being a big one. I just talk about that.

I just was saying to Angie earlier today, I think cereal is going to be the one of the first targets because what do young people eat everywhere in the world?

All the time. Multiple times a day?

Yeah, it’s the corn flakes. It’s the Raisin Bran. It’s the whatever. Okay. Yeah. And life cereal, whatever that stuff is. Right. And so you have to think about that. Okay. What if we can’t trust that anymore? And at least be thinking about this Because the government already, I believe, asks those cereal manufacturers to put certain things in that are good for children.

There’s definitely they call them amendments. They amend the cereal, right. They fortify it. You’ve probably seen fortified with vitamin D, fortified with iron.

It’s been fortified. And I believe, if I remember correctly, is at the request of the government.

It is. And there are studies that show that even in certain cereals, the level of iron, for example, is at a toxic level in certain cereals. And so again, you’re going to need to go do that research yourself. But for us, that’s been on our radar for a very long time. Our children don’t eat cereal in the morning. Typically we have oatmeal four days a week and we have eggs the other days a week. But there is cereal, there is.

Cereal and we have to think about.

That. Yeah. And so this that’s why we’re bringing it up to you guys is like, is this something that has become an addiction for your family? So like thinking about what are the regular rhythm things that you and your family do? And can I just say too, like the price of cereal alone, That’s part of why we don’t buy it a lot, actually. In fact, most of most of the last like seven years, it’s been, oh, on the birthday date, you can pick out your birthday cereal. You know what’s.

Funny about the cereal boxes, too? It’s like as I get older, the cereal boxes get smaller, smaller and like double in cost. It’s so interesting. Like they’re so teeny tiny.

Well, and now they’re totally catered towards an agenda and brainwashing this generation with their woke ideologies, which I’m sure you’ve seen on the packaging as well. And so there’s for us it’s very limited on what we’re what we actually buy. But it’s just a good thing for you to realize and then ask yourself, okay, what are the other things? What are the other things that are potentially like not good for us that my family is addicted to that are a pain point financially doesn’t really make sense. We’d be buying that because we don’t give very much of it anyway. And what can you replace it with that would save you money so that you could actually invest in something that’s going to help you to be resourceful so that when you’re building a local network, you’re valuable to that network.

Which is our next point, which I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already is the date Night one sheet. It is a beautiful document you can download that will have some key questions on it for your date night to just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family. No matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to courageous Parenting.com and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything at Courageous Parenting.com. And I also just want to share real quick about the Parenting Mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self-paced program with live engagement from us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it. You can find out more at Courageous Parenting.com.

Stephen, I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children, but Angie.

And Isaac have done in creating this is literally phenomenal.

This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just some really great practical applications.

This class has just really rocked my world.

It has given me the vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids biblically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of the heart.

We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind.

It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in Scripture this is.

Do your legacy a favor and yourself a favor and just do it.

One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments. So we’ve made this year and I could not recommend it more. We’re no.

Longer fearing dark days ahead, but we’re so excited to raise lights to be leaders for the next generation.

Because it’s important to think about how you can add value because there’s all kinds of things that can happen with currency where, you know, Christians might have to operate outside of the normal currency, right? If it’s a it’s a if it’s a mandated kind of government currency or something like that, you know, I’m not fearful of these things. I just see that this is what they’re doing. It’s literally happening, right? So if I want to be outside of that, then what does that mean? And so we you need to think about, well, how do you add value If you ever have to trade with somebody for meat, do you have vegetables or do you have the meat and they have the vegetables or something like that. And so maybe you can’t do that right now. But you know what? You know what is valuable is skill. And so if you don’t have the skills, any food growing skills right now, that is something everybody can do. No matter where you are. You can have a pot in your apartment. You can have a little thing outside in the backyard. If you have a yard and if you have land, you can do more. But everybody should have the skill. Your children should be learning the skill of.

Growing things 100%. And can I say, kids love it. I mean, it can be so fun. Our kids absolutely love planting seeds, watering the seeds. I mean, it can become a little monotonous at the level of seeds that we have growing as far as watering it every single day. But it’s great for kids and many hands make light work and teaching them the discipline of taking care of something and watching it grow is a lifelong lesson that they should be learning regardless, regardless of if there’s an issue with food, corruption, regardless. Right. And so, you know, you can teach them about botany and teach them about the stems and the roots, and you can read scripture about sowing and reaping and and then go to science and teach and integrate all of this. And listen, if you guys have your kids in school, which mean I don’t advocate for that in this society, but if you do, you can do this on weekends with them after school, before school in the summer. Like a lot of what we’re doing now with plants is actually most of the bulk work is going to be in the summer time when kids are not in school or in sports. They have more time on their hands, put them to work, Let they’re going to feel so good. Like I can’t even tell you how important it is for kids to feel needed and feel like they can contribute. We did a whole podcast on it last week. You’ve got to go listen to last week’s podcast because it is important that kids feel needed. It’s important that they grow in learning skills, that they feel proud of themselves.

And can I tell you, the three year old is just as proud as the 16 year old boy when they see a plant that they planted grow and become a fruit that they then get to eat. There is something special about that. That farm to table that you just you can do it in a pot on your back patio. You can do it in a little garden box in your tiny 6000 square foot backyard, but you can also do it if you have an acre. You just need to plan and you need to think about, okay, what is A16 foot square garden going to look like? What is a you know, and there are books on this, you guys. I would I just want to plug something really quick. Um, I’ve been gardening for a very long time and there has been a season in my life about five, six years where I didn’t do very much gardening on a large scale other than my pots because of the climate that we lived in. And but I had gardened for the 14 years before that. I remember I was pregnant with our daughter, our first year of marriage, and I was starting vegetables for the first time from seed on the back patio of our tiny townhouse and we had no grass. And I put things in pots and in a strawberry pot type of thing, and I planted herbs and I had my herb pot and, you know, and I’m sharing this story with you guys because I know that a lot of first time moms and a lot of young moms or maybe never have gardened before.

People are listening and they’re going, this sounds overwhelming. You just got to try and and I, I know that there’s a lot of help online and you can get that now. But there might be a time when online isn’t an option to get help. So I would actually encourage you to talk to your husband and see if you could invest even $30 and try to get 3 to 4 good books, get one that’s on gardening from seed, get one that is on pest control, get one that is on vegetable container like container growing in vegetable vegetables, in containers and whatever else that you might think would be beneficial to you, maybe one on your zone that you live in and your climate and what can grow in that climate. And I’m telling you, they will be investments that you will never regret. I still have the books that I bought 23 years ago, and six of those 25 books ish are still my favorite books. I’ve never given them away. I’ve never lost them. I keep them. I use them today. And so I’m sharing this with you guys because. This is an investment. You have to grow in knowledge so that you can do. You have to grow knowledge so you can add value to other people. And that’s part of it, is where do you need to make the investments? Right? Yeah. And that is a very simple one that you could do. And then you can also have your kids read those books during summer reading.

So and as soon as you can down the road maybe, but produce something, actually produce a crop even at a small scale and, and that it makes you more valuable and it also provides for your family, which is super, super helpful. Right?

So, you know, as we’re talking about like building a local network and adding value, the two kind of go hand in hand, right? Isaac Like there’s an element of like if you’re building a local network and you’re doing something for the first time, you can talk to them about what you’re trying to do and try to learn from them. People love teaching. Can I just say that that really like makes someone feel good when they’re able to teach something. So if you don’t know how to garden, well, let’s say you want to grow some strawberries. And so you’re thinking with your two little kids, you’re going to get 12 strawberry plants, you’re going to put them in a strawberry pot, but you know that that’s not going to produce enough strawberries for you to freeze for the year. Maybe that’s what you want to do or you want to make jam or you want to make jam and freeze. So you go to a strawberry farm and you start talking to the local strawberry farmer and you start asking them questions. You tell them that you’re excited to learn that you have this strawberry pot that you’re doing with your kids. I’m telling you, that will light up that local farmer and they’ll want to download all of the expertise and wisdom that they can give you. And that’s actually the best way to learn because you’re building network, you’re encouraging that person. They’re feeling good about themselves because they’re helping you. But also if they’re local to you, then the information they give you about pests and cold and frost and all that kind of stuff is going to pertain to you and what you need to know for your area. And it’s it’s such a fun way to build relationships then, you know, if they’re even, you could even invite them over if you if you really connect with them and see that they’re like minded. But the point is, is that you have to step out of your comfort zone and maybe reach out to people that you wouldn’t normally choose to be a part of your community and and and be open, be neighborly.

And remember the Scripture in first Thessalonians 411. It’s so impactful. And I’ve read this as a new believer when I was 23 and onward many times and it says, and to aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands as we instructed you so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. And so while it’s hard to imagine not being dependent on someone like if there were no grocery stores, that would.

Be problematic.

For us today, problematic for us. So we are dependent on not only people, but companies.

And gasoline to get to grocery store and.

All that. So it’s probably near impossible to be dependent on no one. But I think at the same token, we should do our best effort not to be controlled because of food supply and not to be allowing foreign substances, untested substances or maybe corrupted substances to enter our body because the Bible says our bodies are the Holy Temple and we are the protectors of our children. So we need to take that seriously.

You know, it’s interesting. The very first part of that sentence is actually at the end of verse ten, and I love it because it says, but we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more. We urge you, brothers, to do this more and more and to aspire to live quietly. And so you should go and read what is even before that because it’s talking about brotherly love and loving one another, and that that is a light to outsiders, obviously, because that’s talked about. Right, that you might walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. And I think that that this is an important exhortation while we’re building our local network. Yeah, right. Is that like when you’re building relationships with the local grain farmer and the guy who is the rancher and the woman who has the milk cow and and and while you’re building those network that you would be loving to them, that you would have brotherly love, that you would try to bless them also and not just take from people. Right. Like our society. I think that there has just been this I mean, obviously with such a focus on socialism being passed down to the millennial generation, you see it big time, right?

It’s a consumerism, you know, to way of living. We pay. We get, we pay, we get.

And right now on our time clock.

What if all that gets disrupted? Someday, maybe we should be in start building some different kinds of relationships. And you might still pay, but you’re paying and you’re wanting to support. You’re wanting to bless, you’re wanting them to do well and you’re building a relationship with them that.

Is so important. It’s interesting because, you know, we recently also talked about character qualities in our Parenting mentor program. We did a live and it was all about raising your kids with godly character qualities. It was a fantastic study. It was really fun to do. But when I’m thinking about this and having brotherly love and not being of socialistic mindset and seeing that that is an agenda that they’re trying to drive so much with this young generation, this selfish entitlement attitude of I need it when I want it right now and I deserve it for free and give it to me and all those things like how do we as parents today raise our kids to have an appreciation for the work that goes into getting the egg? How do we raise our kids today with them having an appreciation for like even a home cooked meal when they’re, like begging mom to buy pop tarts because all their friends have pop tarts. When pop tarts are really not good for you. And Mom’s making a homemade pop tart, but to have the value like this is how you do it. You have them participate. It’s awesome. You have them take the time and have to learn how to make it and and they will actually respect it, honor it and appreciate it so much more when they’re actually participating in that. Yeah. Um.

Yeah. So let’s go into our next point, which is storage. If you are at a level where you’re producing beyond what you can eat in a short period of time, then storage is important. But what even if you’re not there yet, don’t you think it’s important to have some knowledge and experience around storage before it is?

I mean, I we’ve done our best. We even have some books that are about cellar root cellars, how to build root cellars, how to store food. I have different books on, you know, what temperatures you’re supposed to be storing pumpkins at, for example, compared to root vegetables like potatoes or parsnips or even onions and how you’re not supposed to have onions near your potatoes. And same with apples because of the gas that they put out. When they’re over time, they can actually make your potatoes start to have eyes on them. Right. And to go to seed, if you will. And so, like these are just it’s just basic information that I think a lot of times is missed. Like I know for how many years I had these like super cute little baskets in my pantry that I had bought so that when I came home from the grocery store, I could wash my potatoes and put them in the basket. And I did the same with my I didn’t wash the onions, but I would store my onions in there as well because I didn’t want to have a lot of things on my counter. Well, when I learned about how the gas that onions put out will make your potatoes go to seed and that you’re not supposed to store them right next to each other.

Obviously, I was more motivated to find a different place to store those things because I don’t want to be buying potatoes like over and over again because the potatoes are going bad. And so, you know, it’s those kinds of things that you get from being around homemakers or people who have been doing this for a while that are part of your local network, your community, who have experience in storing vegetables or maybe buying things in bulk. Um, asking those questions like why do you not put your onions with your potatoes, trying to be observant of those things, maybe getting books that are going to challenge you to grow in your knowledge of those things. But for us, I’m just going to share with you guys that last year we had a very successful garden. We had 1000 square foot garden and we successfully grew over £1,000 of produce in our 1000 square foot garden. But at the end of it, I wasn’t anticipating such fruit from the garden, so I wasn’t actually really prepared for the storage of all those things. So we ended up having to go out and buy some other like crate type things for our garage so that we could store things.

And that was fine. But this is an important thing to talk about because if you’re not prepared to have to buy something like that, that could be a burden on a family. So realizing ahead of time that when you start growing things, you need to have freezer space, you need to have storage space, and that needs to be a communication between you and your spouse. But not only that, maybe the fifth book you buy is one on canning so that you can learn how to do that. And I know that canning, for a lot of people sounds really intimidating. I know it was for me, but you guys over the years just trying little things, starting out with jams, then going into spaghetti sauces or pickles and it’s like little by little. And then pretty soon you’re going to be canning so much more and you’ll be so thankful that you did because that’s something that you can pass on even to your children. For them to be able to have healthy, nourishing food that doesn’t have preservatives in it, that’s safe. That’s huge. Yeah. And those become things you can trade with people.

Absolutely. Obviously, another thing is, you know, learning how to hunt something I don’t know how to do. And I’m hopeful that I can take my boys and learn that maybe with someone that is experienced, I’m not sure. With the Lord is how the Lord is going to orchestrate that. But that’s something on my list. I just was never raised doing those things right. So all of these things were learning and so not knowing something, by the way, isn’t a reason not to know it. Like if you have no experience with something, it doesn’t mean you can’t learn it. It’s even with hunting or anything like that. So it’s really important that we have a growth mindset to these things and we don’t we’re not limited by our experiences or, Oh, I wasn’t raised that way or, you know, no one ever taught me these things. And that’s such a defeating frame of mind that I refuse in my brain.

Yeah, And you don’t want your kids to think that way, too, because there’s no way that you could possibly teach your kids everything. And so if they’re going to stand on your shoulders and do even better than you, then they need to have that open attitude of like, I’m going to learn new things and you get to model that for them.

Now, time and resources is a real thing. I mean, time, first of all, a lot of this stuff is going to land on the the homemakers plate, you know, and we got to make sure that the other spouse is helping and or creating time or realizing it takes time. Like if you’re going from not making bread to making bread, for example, there’s a little bit of time right there. If you’re going from, you know, storing your meat and all these different things, everything takes time with these things.

I mean, yeah, we have almost 50 chickens and we the new thing that we started this spring was making our own chicken feed. And while I’m thankful that I now know what is in the chicken feed, it does take extra time. That’s an extra step of an extra hour every month or so, maybe even more than an hour. Maybe it’s two hours where me and a couple of my boys will be out in the garage stirring up our food, you know, making new foods so that we can ferment it for the chickens for the next month. And this is like that might seem like, whoa, out of this world. But on the bread note, like that’s also something that we just started doing again. It was something that we had done many years ago, but this is our first time doing sourdough.

So you got it down to nine minutes, right?

I know. That’s my record time. I was able to make the sourdough bread in nine minutes, but that was without having like a toddler hanging on me and stuff like that. And so I typically will do that at night before I go to bed. And I have this awesome overnight no knead recipe, which you can find on Instagram. I have it there. Or if you’re in the app. I also posted it in the app. But it’s it’s been so helpful for me because I don’t have the time to do these long, drawn out three day, five day sourdough projects. And so you got to find what works for you. And you also need to communicate with your spouse because if they want to benefit from like sourdough bread, for example, then if you’re doing it during the day, you’re going to need help with the little ones. You can get it done fast.

It’s going to take teamwork. It’s going to take allocating resources in different places. Maybe, you know, you sacrifice something that you normally spend money on and you put it towards a tool like that is for these things. And so time and resources need to be talked about. And instead of just going, Nope, we don’t have any money. Nope, we don’t have any time, I would just challenge you to really reconsider and just do an audit and think about, you know, how am I spending my time, How are we using our resources? And maybe there’s something that in culture would seem drastic as a decision, but would be the best decision that you need to do. We also sometimes need to think about, you know, how do we need to reorientate our lives? Are we really busy doing things that don’t matter a ton? And can we start to orientate our lives a little bit differently or how we provide and these kinds of things and asking God and this might take years and there is time, You know, the great transition, all of this stuff is taking time. Of course, they want to usher it in as fast as they can, but it takes time for them to create change. So we have time. It seems pretty imminent that things are changing that drastically and in all different areas.

We’re not to fear this. And remember, no matter where you are, keep it simple and focused on a couple of things. Just learn the skill. Like if anything out of this, you’re you’re not doing anything yet that we’ve talked about. Just learn how to grow something in a pot that is like step one. And it’s super important because time is important. In Ephesians 515 through 21, it says, Look carefully then how you walk. Not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And so don’t, you know, take this as a prescription for you exactly how we said everything right? What is the will of the Lord for you, for where you’re at in your marriage and with your family and where you live in the world and your community and all these things? What is the truth that is important for you and is in the Lord’s will for your family? We’re just here being prompted by the spirit and convictions and seeing what’s happening in our experiences, what we’ve learned, the Bible and bringing forth warnings. Exhortations, knowledge, wisdom.

And we truly want you guys to be proactive parents, right? And for you to read. We’re all going to reap what we sow. That’s just a spiritual law that no one can escape, if you will. But it’s supposed to be a blessing for those who are walking in the will of the Lord. And so as you are teaching your kids and you have them with you while you’re making bread sometimes and and a lot of the time, I mean, a lot of the time I do have kids that are near me when I’m baking or cooking or gardening or, you know, they’re with me the majority of the time. But sometimes you’re in that mode of adding something new. You need to communicate with your spouse and maybe offer up the learning curve time, if you will. Because I’ll just say like the first month of making bread, even the first few weeks, it didn’t take me nine minutes. Yeah, it took me more like 25 minutes or 35 minutes because I was reading the recipe every single time, making sure I had the measurements exactly right. Wasn’t quite sure of ratios. It’s going to be like that for anything new that you try. And so that’s why having the communication with your spouse and going, Hey, I really need undistracted time to do this new thing because I don’t know if I’m doing it right. Once I get it, then I can have the kids doing it with me. You know what.

It takes aligned vision. Otherwise that’s not going to go well. It’s like, Oh, I don’t want to spend money on that. And if the other spouse is like understanding a need for this, then there’s going to be conflict. So you need to get in alignment on these things, have conversations about these things, really think about what’s happening and let’s just we’re just going to share a little bit about our vision as we close here. Our vision, our next steps this year is we’re going to do the garden, just try and do better than last year from the things Angie learned and all those kinds of things. In addition to that, we’re going to do a crop and we’re going to grow, what.

Potatoes and onions and some.

Garlic and some garlic. And that’s an a plot of land outside the fenced garden. And so that’s an actual bigger crop and that’ll be our first time doing that. And our goal is we just kind of looking at the land, figuring out where we’re going to do this. And next year our plan is to have two cows for meat. And so to have a fenced area and everything set up for that. So we have a vision that and it takes us time to it takes time learning. We don’t have enough money to do everything at once and we are diverting and from different places we used to.

Spend and learning new things. I mean, this last year, one of the things that I mean last year was like our first experiment in Idaho having a garden because we had done it in Oregon before. But the climates are different. And so it was a learning curve, right? And then, you know, plotting out that 1000 square foot area was a big, big project. But we also added meat chickens to our flock of layers. And so this year, we’re also going to be probably butchering some of those, learning that whole process and freezing them.

But before we butcher them, make sure they have a bunch of chicks, right?

That’s right. So because we don’t want vaccinated chicks, we we actually have a chicken breeding right now with seven eggs. So that’ll be fun spring chicks. But, you know, that’s a whole nother process, too. Like I remember the first ten, 11 years that we had chickens. I was so scared to have them have babies. Yeah. And I would always just buy a bunch of chicks if we wanted to add to our flock. But now it’s just so different. Since being here, we’ve had broody chickens and we let them have their babies. We’ve done like 3 or 4 times now and it’s just such a fun joy. It’s really fun for the kids to learn. They love watching the chickens hatch from the eggs. And it’s just it’s it’s kind of a cool experience. It’s unlike anything else. And and there’s a lot of that in life that we can miss out on because we get so busy with other things that really don’t have the same value that those things do. And the truth is, is you can’t do everything. So you’ve got to make a choice. You really do. You have to make some choices, like we chose not to do, um, competitive organized sports with our kids for this season because we’re doing so much farming and they’re doing woodworking and. But do they do sports? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All the time. All the time. In fact, they go snowboarding almost every week and they’ve been playing basketball every week and they get tons of exercise. They work out every day. It’s part of their PE. But that being said, like that comes from the perspective of I want to be healthy and not make an idol out of this. And we have other jurisdictions that we can’t let those things be sacrificed just because I need to be at X, Y and Z for a playoff game or whatever.

Well, hey, we hope this was helpful. Of course. Reminder, don’t operate in fear. The motivation when you’re fearful makes you make not as good decisions. The best decisions are made when we completely trust God. But we’re acting in wisdom. So let’s act in wisdom and consider these things.

Thanks for joining us. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to Courageous Parenting and courageous romcom for free online workshops, blog posts and bestselling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program. Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with a downloadable parenting packet to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

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Incredible self-paced program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming.

Stakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private online group, Live Webcasts and the courageous parenting text message line where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragements straight to your phone.

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