The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Preppers LIVE w/ Ben from The Thrivalist Fair

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

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You're listening to P.B.N. Your path back to stability. A long day's journey in tonight, PBN family. I've hopped from cloud to cloud to get with you tonight. It is Preppers Live. And we have a great combination of guests with us tonight to talk about an event in the West Coast that you may know about, you may not know about. One of the special things about tonight is it was set up by one of you, and that's always a big deal to me. So many of you know that nub in the element chat, in the live chat room, and so on.

And he reached out to me and said, hey, let's see if we can link you up with Ben and Janelle from the Thrivaless Fair and have them on PBN to talk about what's going on in May. And a huge opportunity for all of our listeners out there on the West Coast or Pacific Northwest area. You know, the Ryan Buford, Colin Buford, Next Generation fan base out there. Probably JB we could also thank for not necessarily the introduction, but I think she may have been one of the factors in getting Tim and Ryan out to the Thrivaless Fair last year as well. She made the trek all the way to Prepper Camp last year. Big, big ups to JB for getting...

I think she drove, too, if I remember correctly. Anyhow, neither here nor there. I appreciate you guys joining us tonight. We are Day 12. I hope all of you have taken the time, and if you have not taken the time, to join us in this month's preparedness routine, please. You still got half a month to make vast improvements, all right? Day A, day B schedule. I'm not going to go over the routine in full tonight, but you can get it up at pbnfamily.com. If you're in the mailing list, then you already got it. Just check. I think it was about two weeks ago.

So I may send it out on the 15th. Oh, I don't have my magic book here. All right. Put a note in there for all the late comers to get it kicked off. This is, you know, this one is a little more spiritual and a little more bendable. I mean, there's a lot of practical preparedness stuff in it, too. We're continuing with our dry fire practice. But, you know, it's February. For those of you who have tagged along with the Commander's Challenge in previous February, as you know, it's February. For those of you who have tagged along with the Commander's Challenge in previous February, as you know, it's a real mental struggle to get out of this month for me.

And I don't know if many of you have that or not, but I'm ready for sunshine. We have, like, three days of rain in the works. It's tough. But I really like it. You guys are in there. You're doing the works. It's tough. But I really like it. You guys are in there. You're doing the thing. You got Garden Grawl.

It's like 50 different plants sprouting. JB's got peppers on plants already. I mean, it's there. You know, it's there. That's why we did garden planning last month. You know what I mean? I'm always behind the eight ball on garden stuff. It's my listeners who always remind me, hey, I'm doing this, this, and this.

And I go, oh, my God, I've got to get caught up here. Because, yeah, I mean, it's different for everybody depending on where you're at in the nation. But you can always plan. You can always get ahead and do whatever it is that you do. I'll tell you one thing that I tell you guys all the time, and I'll keep telling you, and I'm pretty sure it came from the Flying Dutchman. Hell, it could have came from that nub himself,

now that I think about it. It's hard to remember after all these years, but five perennials a year. Plant five perennial plants per year in your garden. Plan for them. Or, you know, even if you don't plant them in your garden, plant them on your property. Gorilla garden them. This will be year two of a small patch of highly invasive gorilla gardened Jerusalem artichokes. Don't worry. They're in a place that I'll be able to manage them if they do go wild. And I hope that they do go wild.

But, yeah, put that into your hat this year and start that journey if you have. And I know many of you have because I've been talking about it for years and recommending it for years. But if you want to see real, you know, real return when growing food, we're growing foods concerned, like, get into those perennials, man, and the recommendation, like I said, was five per year, I've had years where I've done five, I've had years where I've done less, but you will lose them, too, you know, I had a beautiful elderberry that I started, had a great year with, put it back in the woods, and was hoping to add it to a little patch of food forest back there. And I don't know,

got a little too wet, maybe not enough sun, got real weak, got small, deer ate it. It was, it got attacked by everything. But yeah, you know, that's the deal, right? You keep keeping on. So we've got two great guests. There's no point in me yakking any further. You that's the deal, right? You keep keeping on. So we've got two great guests. There's no point in me yakking any further. You guys know the deal. If you want to help us out, leave a review, share the podcast, share the clips, you know, give people the PrepperBroadcasting.com website.

Spread the word, man. I don't, you know, this is the way. That's the best way I can put it, the most succinct way I can put it. This is the way. This is the way of the future. I don't understand how you can look out on the landscape of the world and have a better plan than self-reliance and independence. So without further ado, let's hear from a couple of our sponsors. We'll get back. We'll get Ben and Janelle on and we'll have ourselves an evening. Preppers Live.

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You'll learn about assessment and stabilization. You'll even deal with things like bioterrorism response, radiation, and how to build the off-grid medical kit at home. Look, 2020 taught us a lot about the limitations of our medical infrastructure in America. Get the Prepper's Medical Handbook today at Amazon.com. Again, that's the Prepper's Medical Handbook by William W. Forgy. Hello. Welcome to the podcast. Present your vaccine passport. Enter your social credit score and be sure you have enough remaining carbon credits to enjoy today's show. Be me and family. Your garden is the resistance. Welcome back. Let's get our guests on the air here with us. Ben, Janelle, do we still have you guys over there in the skype connection

yes we're here jim well thanks so much for joining me tonight and uh i guess make sure you thank that nub also for putting us together because he sent me an email and said hey you should talk to ben about what's going on at the thrivalvalist Fair this year. I keep calling it the Thrivalist Fair. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. I wanted to make sure. Sometimes I get things stuck in my head that are completely incorrect.

But, yeah, I heard about you guys. I think it was two years ago, something along those lines, from some of our West Coast or Pacific Northwest. Listen, our West Coast is kind of not exactly what I mean. And I mean, whenever I hear about a show like this, I'm always thrilled because as I was telling you before the show, I think we need as many of these around as possible. How'd you guys get into the crazy world of self-reliance event planning? How did that start?

Well, for me, I got started when I married my wife, Janelle. I call her my pioneer woman. And she, I think, watched too many Little house on the prairies when she was younger and when we married she said you know i i've always wanted to have a a large piece of land and just kind of lead a simple life and so that's kind of how i got started is uh just kind of following a dream of hers. No way. He was nice enough to find a piece of property and let me do all the things I wanted to do. And he's added in a lot of ideas of his own. Yeah, when we were looking for property,

at that time we were living in Colorado and we actually did purchase 40 acres and we lived in a little tiny house. It was a 12 by 14 foot tiny house. And what kind of wildlife was on our... Elk and deer and our neighbors looking in our window and your neighbor so yeah you know our next door neighbor had 80 acres um he was an airline pilot and he was retired and i think he thought he was still like the captain of the mountain or whatever. And he didn't like that we were living in a little tiny house. And so, you know, we moved out to the country, wanted to get out into the wilderness to have peace and we just never had

any peace. And so we decided to sell that property and move out to Washington state. And we, uh, we met with the real estate agent and he had lined up 40, 50 properties to look at in a week, and the third property that we looked at on the first day, my wife said, this is it, and so, you know, you know how it goes when mama's happy, right, so that we bought the property and moved out here. It literally was vacant property. It had been logged. We have almost 75 acres.

It had been logged. But in this area, they do not clear cut. So we still had a lot of forest left, but we had a lot of open usable land. The ground had good topsoil on it. And so we just started from scratch. And I tell people that we have now moved into a mansion because back in Colorado, we had a 12 by 14 foot tiny home. And now we have a mansion, which is 16 by 32 foot barn shed that we finished the inside.

And that's that's kind of how we live. Man, I did not know that. So so you were lucky enough to find a guide and marry her and then give her everything that she wanted on that little house on a prairie lifestyle. Man. And pointed in the right direction the whole way. How did you know, Janelle? What did you see in that piece of land? When you first got there, was it the open space?

In the top, sir, you said, we can grow here. We can walk animals around on this cleared land and all that kind of stuff. What gave it away for our listeners who are searching for land? all that kind of stuff, what gave it away for our listeners who are searching for land? Well, for me, it was somewhat secluded, but still within reasonable distance of the grocery store and things like that. And lots of level areas where we could make gardens there were meadows there was um forest there's a creek it just had everything that that uh i was looking for man that's a blessing right there so you guys go from from finding the perfect piece of land to to sort of working it from scratch into what you wanted it to be and then what you decided we we had so much damn fun we need to share this process with the world

yeah that's a that's an interesting story because you know we moved out here partly because of of the type of people that we lived around in Colorado, that even though we were out and about, we still had people that didn't like the living the simple lifestyle. And in the country. Yeah. And so we, we learned, you know, as we tried to develop this property, for example, we lived in a tent and cooked in a tent kitchen for four or five months until almost the Thanksgiving. The coldest it got while we were living in a tent,

while we were building the barn shed, was 23 degrees. And we were waiting for our wood burning stove to come in. So we put it in. And, you know, when you learn how to develop a property and kind of how to live off grid, how to live a minimal life, a lot of people are wanting to do that. I travel for a living. I, I, I used to be a perfusionist. I operated the heart lung machine during heart surgery. And I now work for a company where I travel doing training. And a lot of my sales reps knew how we lived. And they would say, tell such and such how you live. And I would tell people, and I'd have some people would say, why would you want to live that way? But I had significantly more people say, oh, I wish I could do that. And I still keep in contact with many of those. They want to know how our projects

are going, how things are going. Was this in the tent or in the barn? Yeah, there are a lot of people out there that want to do this and don't know how to get started. So prior to COVID, that's when we first developed this Thrivalist. And kind of our, you know, our landmark is that, you know, don't only survive, but thrive. And so, you know, it's a higher level of, you know, when we when we try to go work through like a in this area of forest fires, if forest fires come and devastate while you're surviving, you know, just getting by. Well, how do you get to the point where not only when, you know, things go to hell in a handbasket basket that you not just survive, but you actually thrive through it? Yeah, I mean, if you ask me, things are kind of hell in a handbasket already. So I get your point, but what do you, what do you think, this is kind of off topic,

but it is something that interests me because I hear a lot of people say a lot of the same things. When you hear people talk about or write about or post about or text about. What I really want is a big piece of land and a little house on it and to be self-sufficient. Is it your experience that – is this actually what people want and will people really go through what it takes to do that in your experience? Or do you think it's a daydream that helps people get through, you know, the modernity they are stuck in? Yeah, you know, that's a good question, because many of the people that I would speak to

when I'd be traveling on the road, the husband would say, I would love to do that, but my wife would never go for it or vice versa. And I think people have that dream, but they also don't really know some of the difficulties, some of the pitfalls, some of the things you have to get through to get to the point where you can live out in the middle of nowhere and be self-sufficient and not have to depend on anyone else. It's a lot of work, as you know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you're going to give some things up, right? Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people probably would have had a long list of things they would have to give up in order to do that. I wondered about that because I knew in 2020 when everyone was buying land that there would undoubtedly be a certain amount of people who should things smooth over, you know, before we knew what the pandemic really was going to be, should things smooth over, I assumed they would return and some have. And I guess that's because they got out there and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

This is a lot more than I thought it was going to be. But there are solutions for people like that too, right? I mean, you don't necessarily even have to live on 75 acres to live a self-sufficient lifestyle anymore. I mean, I don't live on big land like that, and we do a lot of things self-sufficient lifestyle anymore if you're i mean i don't live on big land like that and we do a lot of things self-sufficiently um so absolutely there's those options if people are willing i guess to uh take the time to learn about them and you know put in the effort um but that's a lot about what what you guys do with the thririvaless Fair, right, is sort of present what people can do to the public, right? Yeah, yeah. And so we started,

wanted to have our first fair prior to COVID in 2019. And we, at that time, we rented a building on our county fairgrounds. And we had probably 1,500 people following our Facebook page. And we were very excited because we had people coming from as far away as California, Arizona, and not only locally, Montana, Idaho, and so on and so forth. And literally two days before the fair, the lady that was the manager of the fairgrounds canceled on us. Yeah, yeah, she canceled. We'd had some fires in the area and we had some firefighters that were camping outside, but they really weren't utilizing the building that we were going to rent to give the presentations. And we had vendors that were coming in.

And we really felt because we were a brand new fair that when we canceled, we had people that literally were on their way or even here. And so we felt really bad about that. And we ended up reimbursing them for hotels and some of them for travel expenses and stuff. And then COVID hit. And COVID hit that kind of put this Thrivaless Fair, Preparedness Fair on the back burner. And then when our wonderful Governor Inslee was gracious enough to say that outside you could have up to 400 people meet, you know, we decided, well, you know what, we've got a beautiful piece of land. We could have it on our own property.

And, you know, you've got to understand, Jim, that that was difficult to do because, as you know, being a prepper, you know, you don't really want to advertise what you're doing and everything. But we really felt that. Bob's set goes out the window, right? into, but we just decided that we were going to put that in God's hands because there were so many people that seemed to be interested in how to do this. And we had been doing it for a number of years already that that's when we had our first fair three years ago. So this year's fair, May 26 and 27, this will be our fourth year. And so we had our first fair. We did a little bit of advertising. We literally had no idea if anyone was going to come because we are still in the midst of COVID. But we had a little over 100 people

come for our first fair. And it was wonderful. It was successful being our first year. And it was wonderful. It was successful being our first year. Oh, that's great, man. That's a great story. Nothing like adversity to build the foundation of something great. Yeah, yeah. So then from there, you just keep on going.

I'm sure 2021 was a big year. After 2020, everyone had their hands held to the fire, fire and they realized the government's not coming to save me. In fact, they put me out of business. What was great about that first year is that we started to make acquaintances in the area and started to develop a community. And I remember one guy after the first fair, he was so excited. He came and he goes, you know, I've lived in this area for five or six years. And he goes, this is the first time I've ever felt a sense of community. And so when I heard that, Janelle and I both knew that we were onto something. And, you know, obviously we had talked about the pandemic and some of the pandemic response and so on and so forth. And when the Delta wave hit, we,

we had shared with some people that, that we're both of us are, Jim, both of us are medical people. Jim, both of us are medical people. And so as a result, we were treating people with COVID, utilizing ivermectin and the FLCCC protocol. But because of the connections that we made during that first year's fair, literally my wife was getting six to 10 calls a day with people wanting treatment. And so that's the power of community that even just that first year we were able to create. And we estimated, we lost count, but we estimated that during the height of the Delta COVID, we probably treated over 300 people. Wow. 300 people at your place or you went to them?

We went to them. Yeah. We drove around and went to them. We also had doctors on call like in the old days. We had people calling from Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Ohio. Just by word of mouth. By word of mouth. We had no idea. And so we would talk with them and do a little, you know, a little telehealth thing and then send them the ivermectin over overnight. And, yeah, I mean, again, that's what happens when you start developing community. That's amazing, man. Yeah. community. That's amazing, man. Yeah. And I guess people, you know, any, any prepper in their right mind is going to be elated to have a doctor on call before everything falls apart, right? Yeah. And for everybody who says that ivermectin doesn't work out of the 300 people that we gave

ivermectin to, no one was hospitalized. Wow. Did anybody die suddenly of myocarditis? Just kidding. No. No one went to the hospital. Yeah. And we had some pretty sick people too. I mean, we had some sick people with a lot of comorbidities. And yeah, ivermectin works. It did the deal, huh? Just too cheap to actually quote unquote work, work.

Yeah. You know, we, we had a source over in India and we were able to treat people for COVID for about $15. Yeah. Oh, I believe it. I believe it. That's why we weren't allowed to use it, but I don't want to, I don't want to drag, I don't know what your guys armor and protection levels are. And I don't want to get you in any trouble on the Prepper Broadcasting Network because we we can start trouble here. But no, that's cool, man. That's a really beautiful story.

Driving around, making connections, saving lives with ivermectin when the world is losing its head. Yeah, that was a weird moment in time. That was like right out of that poem by Rudyard Kipling. You know, when all those are losing their head around you and blaming it on you. That was literally you guys, right? You're driving around with the ivermectin, really you guys, right? You, you're driving around with the ivermectin saving lives. That's cool, man. And, uh, so, so 2024, you guys got up from what I've been reading anyway, today and yesterday, um, a real nice looking roster of people who are going to be at the fair. Where do you guys do it now? Are you allowed to disclose the location? Is it still at your place? Yeah, it's at our place.

We have it on our property. We rent a big main tent, and then we have three or four smaller breakout tents, 20 by 20 breakout tents. And we have demonstrations of different sorts and we have all day activities for the children all day activities for the children so yeah i want to know about that too i saw that the survival kids meet between 9 and 11 or something like that no it's all day that's so cool while the lots are in meetings, we have things for the kids. Yeah, that's really cool. Go ahead, Jim. I'm sorry.

No, I was just saying that's really cool. I'd love to know what kind of stuff the kids get to do. I see that more and more in the prepper and survivalist show circuit too, is events geared towards kids, classes and how you know how to's and that kind of stuff yeah we had them do foraging and uh we've had them do some geo tracking where um you know they have to find something um we've had them build uh shelters we've got random shelters all over our property where we've done that. Mushroom hunting.

And it was really fun because we were looking for morels and looked for about two hours and didn't find any. And so I went ahead with the next activity, which was a treasure hunt. We got to where they found the treasure and we're all sitting around eating our treasure. And this little girl looks behind her and she said, wait a minute, isn't that a morel there? And she was sitting right in front of a pack of morels that none of us had seen. Get out of here. So we're thrilled to find that. Oh, man.

I always told my. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. I was thrilled because Janelle showed me this like big basket full of morels. And I'm like, what? Where did you find those? And she told me that, oh, this little girl, she found them, you know, right, right down below where our house is. I'm like, that's awesome.

Yeah, I always told my wife if we had a daughter, she would, that would be her name. I love those little mushrooms, man. I was lucky enough here in Virginia, actually closer to Charlottesville, to meet some people randomly, an older couple who were just as nice as you can make them, who invited me out to go morel hunting with them. They didn't know me from Adam. And I said, I'd love to go out and hunt some morels on a forum. And they said, come on over and we'll go. Crazy.

But, man, yeah, that was about 10, 12 years ago ago i can't even imagine people doing that these days but that's cool that you have morels growing on the property good time of year to do it right may and you said you have fires so i guess the uh that sort of fuels the growth of those guys right yeah yeah yeah that's a beautiful thing. Yeah, getting the kids involved, you know, that's important. These days, I mean, even my kids, they can get into those patches where they're as easily sort of distracted from the outside world as we are as people who are sort of like, you know,

halfway cybernetic with the computers and the phones and uh whenever whenever i get the kids out you know you always see that you always see that it come back to them you know what i mean you see it come back to them and in their mannerisms and in their facial expressions i remember what last year when I took my kids out hunting in, I think it was in the fall. It might've been the latter part of the fall. It wasn't that cold out, but I remember they were chasing each other up this really steep hill.

I have two boys and they were chasing each other up this really steep hill and pulling each other down. And, and, and we had like, you know, the sun was setting and everything and i was like all right well we gotta start heading back to the car and um the fight that we had over leaving the steep hill was such a was such a i mean i'll remember it forever you know what i mean because we're we're fundamentally a normal American family when it comes to technology and stuff.

We're not like off-grid and candlelight. We've got video games and all that kind of stuff. And to see this sort of modern kid like damn near in tears over having to leave the dusty, steep hill was just, you know, it was a really good reminder that, you know, kids, no matter how, you know, inundated they are with the modern world, they still yearn for that out there. Yeah, yeah. They need that. And that's solely missing in our society. And, you know, obviously we need to teach our kids, you know, what we have learned in regards to preparedness and how to live a simpler life and situational awareness.

We need to teach our kids that and pass that information down. Oh, yeah. It only goes one way. I mean, that is fundamental. I always call it the 100-year amnesia, but that's how that happened, right? It just took a couple generations of people to stop teaching those things because of convenience, and then you wound up with me. I mean, I was, you guys, my audience is probably sick of hearing about it, but it's worth telling you, when I bought my first house before I had my son, I didn't even own a hammer. Like my father-in-law brought a hammer over

because I was hanging pictures. I had no skills whatsoever, aside from cooking, because I was a chef. But aside from cooking and like playing guitar, that that was the full extent of my manhood. And I was having a kid, married, owning a home and just completely, totally unprepared for the life I was. And, you know, the craziest part about it, guys, was that it all seemed fine to me, you know, because I was reared like I was reared in that weird way that a lot of kids who grew up in the 90s were which was like you know you can be whatever you want to be and that's enough so like being a chef and paying your bills was going to do it it was going to be fine and i would never run into a problem that would go outside of those bounds as long as i could small dice it or mince it and saute it,

everything would be fine. And yeah, that was a rude awakening when I realized just what I had to catch up and learn. But yeah, it takes no time at all for us to forget these things and not teach the next generation. And then, you know, those skills that we depended on for how long just disappear but it's events like yours that bring them back you know yeah and that's um you know that again that's why we that's why we we started this is to to be able to impart that knowledge and

so many so many people uh when they look around and see what's happening in the world, um, they may not even have any property, but they certainly see that, well, you know, we need to get prepared because, uh, things, things are just going, going to hell in a handbasket. And, that's why I think that we've tapped into something that is much needed. And it's just cool teaching people about how to live this kind of lifestyle. Yeah.

Events like yours are so important because what I've come to realize, I do a little bit of consulting work as well. And what I've come to realize, the biggest problem for new, I don't even want to call them preppers necessarily because some people that I do business with, they're not even necessarily interested in really becoming self-sufficient off-grid or preppers. But they want to fortify their lifestyle a bit, you know. And the thing that I run into most with these people is they don't know what they don't know you know they they're so far it's and it reminds me of me you know way back

it's like you don't have any idea what you need and you don't even know really what categories of things you need or even the scariest part of it all is they don't even know what they want essentially like they think they know and and it takes that exposure of going to an event and saying honey i'm gonna go to the uh the freeze dry class just because you know what i mean and then you go to a class like that and you realize like oh this thing can be used for a lot of different things and you know what it would add skill or class, you know, to that example. But I think people need that. They need that sort of exposure to a variety of different takes

and a variety of different skills on preparedness and self-reliance and maybe even a variety of different sort of lifestyles in total so they can start to parse out, you know, I'd like to have chickens. I wouldn't like to have pigs. I'd like to have solar. Not interested in having a wood stove in my house or, you know, whatever sort of preferences they would have. But that seems to be the biggest hump with new people is they just don't know what they don't know, you know. people is they just don't know what they don't know you know yeah it's kind of funny because last uh at last year's fair um we just uh gave a a tour of our of our tiny house and and we do not have um plumbing yet uh we we we have a well down below that we haven't run the water up. We have plumbing in the house, but we just don't have water connected yet. But we recently had solar put in, which was

nice, but we don't, we have a composting toilet and our composting toilet is a five gallon bucket that we put a sawdust on. And I took them out to our huge composting bin and showed them the compost and picked up a big handful of it and said, you know, smell it. And some people were like, you could tell they were hesitant to smell it. I hope it was far along. Well, that smells good. And again, we just, we use that on our garden. We composted a year. There's scientific research that shows that there are no human pathogens in it and you can do this. And so we had a number of people that have told us that I went home and I built a composting toilet just like yours as a backup

in case our electric goes down and we need to have another place to do our business in. Yeah, it's an easy solution. It really is an easy solution. And if you're talking about a short-term, like if you're preparing for a short-term water outage or something like that, like if you're preparing for a short-term water outage or something like that it it's as easy as it gets five gallon bucket peat moss sawdust whatever one of those nice i'm guessing you guys have like a pretty decent toilet seat lid on that thing if you're using it regularly and then yeah yeah it's it's a great solution it's nothing human or is a thing it's a great solution. Human ore is a thing. It's definitely a thing. I've never personally composted it before.

I have chickens in my backyard that are, I think they would get into it. Do you guys have free-ranging chickens, or do you keep them far away from that? I don't have enough room to keep it far, far away. How do you keep animals from getting into it? We don't seem to have a problem with the animals getting into it. Our chickens, we don't let them... Our compost bin is outside of our garden, and

the chickens kind of have their own little pen, so we don't allow them to go in there and do anything. Yeah. No, they don't get in there. Oh, okay. Good to know. Good to know. Cause as, as even though I'm on the outskirts of Richmond city, I have like a zoo in my backyard and I'm talking of wildlife. I mean, we have, And I'm talking of wildlife. I mean, we have, our property butts up against the highway and we have this buffer of woods that is like a funnel. And there's just deer and coyote and foxes and all, just all hours of the day we have crazy wildlife running through there. So I always was nervous about that. I always thought they're going to get in it and dig it all up or whatever they, you know, that kind of thing. But we do have dogs. So if we kept it in the yard, they probably wouldn't come in the yard. They don't,

it's very rare. They risk it all for a chicken and come in the yard because we have pit bulls. So they, they meet at a pretty nasty end if they do risk it and don't get out quick enough. So you guys keep chicken? What else do you keep on all those acres? Gardens, chickens? Do you keep hogs or anything? We have goats. Goats, okay.

Yep, and we utilize the goats to just kind of keep things cleared. You know, we can take them out. Oh, okay. okay yeah they're your lawnmowers yeah they are lawnmowers so that's a good deal do you milk them too or no um they are just all just old enough to breed them so we don't okay i got you how to have any babies yet but that's our intention janelle are you are you excited about the prospect of goat milk coming into the house next yeah i would love to make goat cheese and and that's actually one of the classes that we have coming up is making your own cheese we've

done that one before and it's been very popular. You guys know Rick and Jane from Prepper Camp. She is, Jane is, well, according to Rick anyway, he always tells me about all the amazing concoctions that she comes up with from the milk because they have goats and they get like inundated when it comes. have goats and they have they get like inundated when it comes ice cream and cheesecake and obviously cheese and you know all kinds of goodies you can make with that stuff i'm a big fan of the as you can imagine coming up in the what was it about the 2000s to 2010s really heavily in the restaurant industry i mean we put goat cheese on everything. It was getting real popular around that time.

You know what I mean? It was a big deal. But I always wanted to get hogs. I love pigs. I don't love pigs, but I love eating pigs. And I think they're such an amazing animal from a survival standpoint. They give so much. You know what I mean?

I don't know if that's something in your future, if that's a little too much to deal with. Yeah, for us, uh, you know, for us, it's probably a little, little too much to deal with. And, and, uh, you know, our, we, we would like to, well, what we're doing now is um and it's one of the things that we're going to feature at this year's fair is is uh uh we're probably 75 80 percent done of building a wall of peony i don't know if you've heard of that before but it's basically yeah it's an underground greenhouse and um oh okay i've seen them i didn't know that was the name. We first learned about them on YouTube. At 8,000 feet in Bolivia, they're growing bananas year-round. I started doing some research and found a guy out in Nebraska that had a kit.

We purchased the kit. Last year's fair, all we had was a hole in the ground. We had just dug the hole in the ground and so i've been working we had some supply chain delays and so on and so forth weather and um we're like i said we're about 80 percent done with it and hopefully we'll be close to being totally done with it during the fair. And I was hoping that this year we'd be able to start growing some stuff during the winter, but definitely we'll be able to do that next year. And so that's one of the things that we're going to feature is that people, if you want to grow your own food year round, this is the way to do it.

And there'll be just another level of training that we can give. Had a couple people that have already told us uh they're very excited to hear about the wallopini yeah it's very cool i've seen those for sure i guess you have to grade the ground in such a way that so it doesn't like fill up with water when it rains or something like that that That was always my biggest concern was the water. Yeah, definitely back east because your groundwater is much higher up. In our area, it's not as much of an issue, but it certainly is much easier if you have a sloped land that is maybe a little bit raised. And of course, obviously it's, it's optimal if it faces South. But yeah, that would be a problem. And in that situation, you know,

we just put a, we put some sauna tubes down in the ground, three, four feet and had big eight by eight posts that we put in there and then build the retaining wall. But I've had people that have that I've seen do it with concrete. So they pour concrete and seal it and do it that way. So there are a lot of ways to do it. Yeah. I love it. I think it's a great idea. I mean, it's sort of like the root cellar concept, but instead you're harnessing heat and holding on to heat rather than cool, so it makes perfect sense. I guess the top of it is some sort of, are you guys doing like a plastic sheeting or glass or what's the top of the thing? Yeah, so the top of it has three-eighths. You can use three-eighths or a half-inch polycarbonate. So it's more of the industrial greenhouse type plastic polycarbonate.

Sure, yeah. One of the things that you obviously in our area, because of the amount of snow that we get, is it also has to be thick enough that it has to take the snow mode. Yeah. But most of that melts off anyways because it... It's warm. During the coldest parts of the year, at night you can still maintain around 50 degrees in there.

Wow. Oh, that's not bad at all. What do you guys do? What do you think? I mean, how well insulated is your home at the moment? Are you guys pretty... Can you keep temperature comfortable in there, or would you rather sleep in the Wallapini on cold nights?

No, no. It is quite warm. Because we only live in a 16 by 32 foot, we actually, in our loft area where our boys, before they were younger then, but now they're gone, we actually left that uninsulated in the roof because the wood-burning stove was, we were very comfortable down below here, but when they were up there with the heat rising, they kept the window open year-round. They were roasting up there.

Yeah, they were roasting, so they kept the window open, evenround. They were roasting up there. Yeah, they were roasting, so they kept the window open. It would be 10 below outside, so we have no problem heating. It's very toasty. Very cool. Yeah, that's the good thing about that little smaller space, right? You know, there is something to be said about, I was literally talking to my son about this two nights ago, that our houses are too big and too expensive.

Like to the point where it's, I think it's a detriment to all of society. Not because like having a big house is a problem, but because, well, it is a problem. It's financially a problem. It's financially a problem. I mean, when I first heard the statistic about how many people are making, I think it's something like $250,000 and living paycheck to paycheck, largely because of mortgage. It's like, we are really screwing this whole thing up, you know? And I think a lot of it has to do with that, right? It's just the incessant growth of our living space that we are rarely in. And most of that living space we rarely use. I mean, I live in a small house and there are rooms that I never go in.

It's not a big house. It's not like a tiny house, but it's a tiny house by most people's standards nowadays for sure. And even we have wasted space. So I can't imagine. It's just amazing to me. I think people have dug themselves into a financial pit, and we've really hurt ourselves going after these big, giant houses. I think the country could really benefit from a movement, even if it wasn't necessarily a total self-sufficiency movement. If it was just a movement of like, let's not bury ourself in debt. Let's get a nice small place and make the most of it

because then we don't have to, you know, fight our whole life to survive. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head for and and that's what we went through is that you know my wife and I we we make a good living but we did not want a big house and it it literally took us three years because and that's what they tell you is that if you're kind of downside and you want to live a simpler lifestyle you want to live in a tiny house, you know, our 16 by 32 foot, that's a large tiny house, but it's still a tiny house compared to most standards, is if you haven't used it in a year, get rid of it and donate it or sell it or whatever. And as a result of us living a simpler lifestyle, we are totally debt-free. And even though when we retire, we'll not be making the money that we make now,

we'll still be able to do the Thrivaless Fair with no problem because we're debt-free. Oh, yeah. It's huge. You know, the best retirement plan is to be debt free. The best life plan is to be debt free. I mean, really. I mean, it's the lament of so many. It's the prison of so many. It's the car payment and the house payment.

And the college payment now also for a lot of people. A lot of people are suffering their whole life those three things you know do i have the college but do i have the car payment do i have the mortgage this month and all of that just keeps you sealed in a well probably like a lot of those guys you were talking to that were saying man i'd really love to live in a barn rather than my, you know, $500,000 nightmare house that I have to work my ass off to keep up, you know, inside and out and all that kind of stuff. It's tough. Something about it. We need an American downsizing for sure. We have a little picture we have on our wall and it says, if you want more, have less. And that's kind of

counterintuitive to a lot of people, but, but literally we have more because we've downsized. Yeah. Oh, I can understand you 100%. Um, so I'm looking, you guys let me know if this is correct or not. I'm looking at May 26th and 27th from 8 to 5 p.m. Is that this year? That is this year. Yep, that is correct. And we have camping on our property. So that has grown every year where we just had a few campers, pitch and tents.

And this past year, last May, we had over 40 families camping, over 40 families camping. We have people it's anywhere from tents to big RVs. We do tell people that, you know, it's dry camping. And so you're going to need to make sure you bring your own water. It's dry camping. And so you're going to need to make sure you bring your own water. But with that said, we gave a bunch of water out last year because not everyone came prepared. And and but yeah. And I think that that's what you know, I think that that's what people like about the Prepper camp out there. And in Saluda, North Carolina, you can camp, you spend the weekend. I mean, we've got this beautiful

place where you can hike around. We had a guy that brought his motorcycle from Seattle. He's got like a motocross and I hooked him up with some real nice gravel riding out in the middle of nowhere up a 4,000 foot mountain. And, it's just a time where people can get out and camp on our beautiful property and hopefully learn a lot about homesteading and preparedness and living off grid. And this year we will have some nighttime classes as well. Yeah. Yep. And a concert.

Yeah. We're going to have a guy who's going to give a little concert. And yeah, we're hoping to, it's going to be even bigger. Each year we've grown by over 100 more attending. Last year we had over 400 people. And we think it's going to even be bigger this year. people and we think it's going to even be bigger this year oh it will i'm sure it will i'm sure it will you're in that weird sort of vein that i'm in where uh and many preppers and survivalist types are which is unfortunately um we're fortunate when things are unfortunate you know on the world stage you know what i mean it brings people to this thing. But I don't know. There may have been a wholesale change in all of it. We may not need the requirement of calamity to have people focusing on this stuff anymore. Even if things were to even out, which I think we're far away from that, but even if things were to even out by some miracle in a year, I still think there'd be a lot of drive for people to learn these skills now. I don't know if you feel this way, but I do feel like we've crossed a

threshold where there's no going back for a lot of people, you know, that they're not going to depend on things that they used to depend on, or this dream in their mind is too big and the movement is too big and they're going to go for it, you know, whether there's a problem or not, you know, it's not going to take a necessarily a problem. I mean, I'm sure you meet people like that. Well, yeah. And I think that COVID was such a paradigm shift for our society that most of the people that had any sense of common sense realized that something, how our governments of the world reacted to this situation, How are governments of the world reacted to this situation that it started opening a lot of people's eyes up that were never open before? It's a beautiful thing. I mean, it was a terrible time, but, you know, it was the best worst case scenario we could have asked for, right? It wasn't a doomsday calamity. It wasn't a world war. It wasn't a doomsday calamity it wasn't a world war it wasn't a nuclear war it wasn't a like an earth-changing natural disaster that triggered it you know so in many

ways it was a blessing in disguise if you ask me because it woke so many people up. And it keeps working. You know, it persists after all these years, even. And the revelations of a lot of things, I think, are also pushing people in this direction as more and more information comes out. But so PBN family, if you're in the Pacific Northwest, or if you want to be, May 26th through the 27th, 8 to 5 p.m. each day, and bonus night classes and activities the evening of the 26th. Consider the Thrivalist Fair, Thrivalist.org, Thrivalists with an S.org. Go check the website out. I guess the closer you guys get, you know, a schedule will be up for.

Do you guys have a section here about who's going to be there, though? Right. Just not the schedule yet. Yeah. For those people that have committed our speakers, we are putting up, you know, the description of what they're talking about. And then once we get the schedule finalized, we'll be posting that on the Thrivalist website and also our Facebook page. And yeah, we're about 75% complete in regards to the schedule. So once we get that locked down here, hopefully in the next two or three weeks, we'll put it out there. we'll put it out there beautiful well if you guys if you guys have nothing left to add about the event

I'd like to wrap it up for the evening you've been awesome what a great story well Jim I really appreciate you taking the time and publicizing us our fair and like I said our goal is to be the West Coast equivalent of the East Coast for our preparedness fair. So I think we're going to get there. And it's people like you getting the word out. And I greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much.

I appreciate you guys hanging out with me for an hour and talking about it. And if you get once we get into May, if you want to come back on, just reach out and we'll have another sort of, you know, maybe a little more in depth on what who's coming and what's going on and try to lure even more people out to your property. That would be awesome. Let's keep in touch and do that. Sounds good to me, bud. All right.

Thanks so much, PBN family. I do appreciate you guys, and we'll see you tomorrow for, you know, the Rising Republic with L. Douglas Hogan. Talk to you soon, folks. See you. Thank you for listening to the Prepper Broadcasting Network, where we promote self-reliance and independence. Tune in tomorrow for another great show and visit us at PrepperBroadcasting.com

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