#86 Shannon Hayes | Sustainable Living and Homeschool Adventures

AUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
So we're talking about what happens when we homeschooling parents get ready to graduate, right.

00:04 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Absolutely. And first of all, shannon, for the people listening once again, we are joined by Shannon Hayes and there's an earlier episode and you should go check that out and we were like, oh, it's a long time since we have talked with Shannon. Let's connect with her, her hear how life is and where she is.

00:27 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
So, first of all, welcome oh, thank you for having me back. I think about you often and wonder where you guys have hit next yeah, we should have like a little map on the homepage yeah we should so so since we had talked, we have been everywhere. So you look just as happy as you did last time when you were newer to the road. You look like you're still enjoying it.

00:52 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Absolutely. I mean just the last year, I cannot even recall. We have been four months in Mexico treating the States, which was a weird place. Wonderful to experience it so you did make it to the states.

01:09 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
Yes, we did yeah, yeah, but only. I mean, there's were so many people to visit, so many places to go.

01:15 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
We are going back actually so, but we worry, so we slow travel in a way where we, where we live together with people and that way you often come in and actually you're something else than a tourist. You see the place, you go to their favorite places and explore how it is, and one of the big differences is the the malls. If you go out to have visit a restaurant, you are sitting watching a parking lot.

01:46 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
Often it feels like oh, I don't think you saw my america no, no, no, we should come to your america.

01:55 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
One thing we really need to do if we're going next time, we have to just buy a car.

01:59
Yeah, because there's logistics problem being six people and two dogs and the trains they will not take the dogs and it was it was. It was just too complicated. We always had to borrow cars or rent and that was pretty expensive. To rent cars, it was definitely out of our budget. Yeah, if you stay for 100 days, it it adds up. So I think next time we should buy a car and get buy it in one place and figure out to sell it.

02:29 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Well, they could.

02:30 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
Oh, you couldn't just do an extent? Well, we don't need to talk about the rental programs yeah, I didn't know um, yeah, that's, that's very interesting, but um, I will say I don't think you saw my america no, we would love to see that we saw the mall is.

02:46
There is a mall. It's an hour away and um, I just, we only go when we need to get our phones or computers repaired. Other than that it's, you know, and we kind of think of it as a garage for the technology, right as an auto body shop for our technology. We just, you know, my daughters, in spite of, I'll tell you, I'm the kind of person who I dress in the dark, so I, you know, I get up before light and whatever's on the top next to my dresser, that's what I wear that day and that's that's the extent of my fashion.

03:24
And maybe that's because, and that's that's the extent of my fashion, and maybe that's because of that, my daughters became very, very into fashion. They both have sewing machines and, in spite of my life, where I care very little about what I look like, they really do. And it took some adjusting as a parent to go. Well, I thought that meant you were materialistic. I thought that that meant you were shallow, and so it was a difficult but wonderful lesson for me to learn, as my two daughters grew up caring about fashion, and they care about fashion as an artistic expression and they develop. They say I gave them their fashion sense because I would take them thrift shopping when they needed clothes.

04:09
We always, just you know, went to Goodwill or Salvation Army and I would let them try on whatever they wanted and they could have whatever they wanted. And so, in my own unwitting way, because I didn't care about clothing, they became these little fashion bugs and um, so they were very interested in seeing a mall, because I wouldn't take them there. And they, their understanding is mall is the mall is where you go if you care about fashion. And they got there and they were horrified. They, they thought, from their eyes, the mall was a foreign experience for them. They would walk from shop to shop. When they first did this, actually, they had an exchange student from Spain who wanted to go to the mall, so that's how they had their first entry into the mall. And they were horrified because, in their eyes, there was no originality, there was no artistic expression, there was just sort of a dictate of this is what everyone is supposed to look like right now, and for them it violated. It violated the artistic ideal, but it also violated what had become an ecological ideal as well, that fashion is about creating and repurposing. And, um, and it didn't. You know, they just looked at stuff and they went. Well, if this changes every couple of weeks, where does it all go? And they became. They ended up researching that a lot for their homeschooling. Where does this stuff go? What happens to it? And, um, they think that it is the, the anti-fashion place they have. Yeah, so they've grown up and you know they have.

05:52
They both have dress forms next to their sewing machines. They my one daughter is into historical fashion and she will talk to you about how the women's movement can be represented, from the transition of a latch to a button to a zipper and what that meant socially and historically. And the other one is all about modern fashion. And you know she'll sit there. You know the cafe is open every Saturdays and sometimes she'll say, well, I need something new to wear Saturday morning at the cafe. And she'll say, well, I need something new to wear Saturday morning at the cafe. I'm going to design something right now. And she'll start, you know, ripping and tearing and they'll buy curtains from Goodwill and shred them up and turn them into something new. Or they'll take old bed sheets and turn them into kilts. I mean, you just never know what's going to come.

06:48 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But they did get a good fashion sense, only from my neglect, I'm afraid, not from my intentional instruction. We've actually talked quite a lot about it, or at least I have talked quite a lot about fashion with my children, because I think appearance matters and I, you know, I don't care a lot about fashion and I don't care a lot about how I look, but I don't not care at all. The things that I have I have picked because I like them, I feel comfortable, I feel the fabric is nice, I feel that it will regulate the temperature in a way that I like. You know, I like a white shirt for the really hot and illusion summer days and I like a good woolen sweater.

07:30
Here in the Scandinavian we're not in Scandinavia English well, nordic fall, so it's not whatever that is right next to my bed. It's something I chose. So we've just talked about how we navigate that field between we don't care about fast fashion, we don't care about whatever color is central now or whatever, but on the other hand, we don't not care at all and also because we I mean, we're not more radical than you, but we are in a maybe slightly more display kind of way with our traveling lifestyle it matters how we look when we arrive. If we arrive and we are a homeschooling, full-time traveling family of vegans that do not wear shoes, and then if it's also full of holes and ketchup stain, you know it's just going to be too much for people to handle and they will not meet us with an open mind. So, especially after we left the life where we lived in a house, we've become a little more conservative, a little more. Your clothes have to be clean. There can be no rips, no holes. Uh, you have to brush your hair twice a day.

08:58
You have some of us well, yeah, so it's just an interesting, interesting navigation, I find yeah.

09:12 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I find I have since I was a teen I had hated brand. I have hated brands and in some way I can look back at it and say maybe some of it came from jealousy inside my own little family. So my big brother was bullied in school. He, you know, he had he still have red hair, freckles, everything that was. He didn't have glasses, but otherwise the things that school children was like oh he looks different, looks different, let's bully him.

09:45
And so my mom, being on a budget with the clothes, she decided that he got a like Levi's jacket, you know one of the really cool ones, and I got the cheap ass cubby and that made me aware that it was really weird. I thought that now my brother didn't get bullied as much because he had the right jacket on and I just started to to really be against it. I took off. If I bought clothes, I took and there was a brand on. I took off the brand of the pocket in the bag and I do not wear clothes with any branding on because I do not want to promote clothing brands that way, unless they pay me loads of money, which I don't think they would. But it gave me this anti-branding feeling.

10:38 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
Well, you know it was.

10:40 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Some of it was based on being jealous on my brother, but then that was what opened my eyes to why they treat him different.

10:48 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
now it was interesting how we get to where we are. So the school that I went to was on the rural suburban fringe here. I'm very rural, but I was on the edge of a school district where fashion really mattered. But it was not fashion, it was exactly as you said, jesper, it's the brand. And I had.

11:16
My mother bought me a pair of sneakers and I thought they were a perfectly good pair of sneakers, a perfectly good pair of sneakers. But then I found out, like the girls would say, well, they're not Reeboks, your sneaker is a cheaper brand. And I just thought, oh, you have to be kidding me. You absolutely have to be kidding me. And there was a couple of things that happened that were very formative. It was in my junior high school years and I had a couple of friends who spoke to me about the brand of my sneakers and I kind of dismissed it. And then a close friend took me aside to explain to me that I was repeating outfits. I had a white shirt that I liked very much and I wore that white shirt frequently, and she took me aside and said you can't repeat outfits that often. You're wearing that shirt too frequently.

12:10 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
And I looked at her and I went what.

12:16 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
And then there was a girl who sat in front of me. Our names were alphabetically very close, so we were always seated next to each other. I hadn't become friends with her because I was in with a different friend group, and she came in one day with um white, soft, brand new white shoes, and the boy at the desk next to her stepped on them and got uh black marks on her shoes and everybody laughed.

12:54
She began to cry and I I mean I could cry right now thinking about this, because it upset me so much that he stepped on her shoes and everyone laughed at her and she and I had never spoken and I, I was horrified and I leaned forward and I put my hand on her and I said you know, my mom uses this particular cleaner. I think it would. I think it would take the stains out of your shoes, I think they'll clean up. And and we just started talking and we realized every single class we were seated together because they were trying to enforce discipline and they always put her in front of me because her last name was Hanford and my last name was Hayes. And so then we started talking and talking, and talking and we became great friends, talking and talking and talking, and we became great friends. She's still my friend to this day.

13:49
But it was this moment where I was just so horrified that what I did was I got a pair of my mother had a pair of overalls that she had discarded. They were painter's overalls and I realized, oh, my goodness, these are so perfect because I can wear overalls and I can just put on any shirt that's clean and off I go. So I switched to a uniform and to this day I still have uniforms. I have certain shirts that wear over this and then are tanked up and then when I go, if I like the brand, if I like the shirt, I just rebuy it until it wears very thin and I have to throw it out and get the next one.

14:28
But those girls define my fashion because I just determined that I would just find whatever was loose and comfortable and and I really didn't care about brand, I became very angry, like you, jesper, about how it was used for children, and I remember that girl's mother had you know it was a big deal that she had new shoes. It was a really big deal that day and it had been a big thing between her mom and her to get this to. You know, it was in middle school where appearances started to matter and it was so cruel and so awful, um, that I never got could let go of it, and so, yeah, I just adopted a uniform. A uniform is good and it's also cruel and awful.

15:13 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
And still to this day, these white shoes and white sneakers are part of the young people's fashion. And in our family we say your feet are made to walk on, so we try to avoid shoes. But to the extent we do wear shoes, they have to be shoes for feet. And this idea that you have to have to keep your shoes in this state of perfect whiteness, how can you ever go on a hike, how can you ever play soccer, how can you ever be climb a tree if your shoes are so important? That's you know.

15:52 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
But okay, keeping the children down in a weird way, it is weird but now we're going to come into where are we right now, because my daughters are both in college now, so we're not homeschooling anymore. One daughter is doing college online and she's in the other room working at her coursework right now and the other daughter has transitioned. She's going to school at the college down in town 15 minutes away and she has made some friends down there who are not from an agricultural background and they were hanging out over the summer. And her friend is from an urban background, from outside of New York City, and he comes from a background where there's definitely not a lot of resources. He's Black and he doesn't have a lot of resources. He's black and he doesn't have a lot of resources and I give him a lot of credit that he spent time with Ula on our farm.

16:52
But the question came up about the sneakers and he looked down at his feet and we were like are you? We notice your sneakers are very clean and he's like, well, yeah, those are my kicks. They gotta stay clean. Those are and they were really, really important to him and and we we ribbed him and teased him. You know. Well, you know, come on, you gotta get your feet wet, you gotta, you gotta go and for him those sneakers represented a very important object and I I had to.

17:35
I still haven't fully understood it because this is not a materialistic person at all. This is a person who is a very caring, kind person. But he just says, where I come from, your kicks matter and you got to take care of your kicks and they're really expensive and they're very important and and I thought you know I don't fully understand that, but I did understand enough to go all right, this isn't for me to buy a pair of shoes to be able to walk through the mud, to be able to. You know my life, obviously, the life on the farm requires that you have to be able to get dirty on the farm, requires that you have to be able to get dirty. You really do, um, and this person had had no contact with agriculture.

18:32
So for him, you know, the objective is to keep things, you know, maybe more toward what you're saying. No, I have to be clean, I have to be really presentable. And the stresses on him in our culture, particularly as a young Black man in a very, very white, republican-centered county that does have this racist backroads, you know, for him that was really important. So it is interesting how the culture that we come from, you know, will define these attitudes that we have. We think, you know, we think we're original, and how we come to our belief.

19:07 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But look how much our different cultures have shaped our perspectives on these things and very often it's not just the thing, it's the way we handle the thing, our relation to the thing, the way it. It could be a white pair of sneakers, that, um, that is your I, it matters, my appearance matters and it could be this oppression and this you feel you're worth nothing, or that it's has to be the right brand, or it's it has this oppressive element. So it's always a question of how we approach these things and rather than are you into fashion or not? If you like to express yourself through fashion, then it's a good thing, but if you feel like you're a brother, that you'll be bullied and you can't get through the day because your tummy hurts and your brain is going like this and you have no friends and therefore you need the jacket, then it's not a good thing. It's armor. Yeah, it becomes like yeah yeah, and I have.

20:22 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
When I look back now I I can see, oh, I've been so cute. I've been no, no, but I've also been so cute in my youth when I entered into the media industry and, oh, there's a lot of blazers and jackets and people trying to look like all professional and I was like, oh, I don't want to be like that. So I had my silk shirts, but I still needed to appear to be able to be in that world. So it was like short sleeves, silk shirts, and it was kind of my ah, fuck you all kind of, but still I'm fitting in. Yeah, yeah, I'm fitting in.

21:04
So when I look now, I'm like, and now I have a very not today, but a very flowery period whenever I find a flowery shirt or when I find one in the trips, yeah, but I'm like, oh, I want that. And part of me now is like should should I at some point grow up? I'm turning 50. Should I try with that blazer and look like grown up at some point? But the fun thing is my boys they look way more stylish than I do in my laid back stuff with flowers and stuff. And I'm looking at them now and saying, ok, it's actually kind of look good okay, it's actually kind of look good.

21:49 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
I like it. Yeah, the boys, they like a button up and a blazer and a nice pair of pants that look good yeah, then they don't have that much not too much shoes and very long hair, so it's a wonderful mix.

21:57 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
I like it. Yeah, yeah. How was it to finish?

22:03 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
uh, homeschooling you know, I guess I I haven't decided if we finished or not. Um, you know, we got a paper in the mail that said you're finished. Um, but there's an interesting thing that happens here in the united states Because I homeschooled my daughters, we didn't do any. We only did the minimum required testing, and I don't believe in the standardized testing, and particularly since the daughter who was going to the mainstream college, the one who goes to online college they didn't even care about exams or anything. And the one who goes to online college they didn't even care about exams or anything. And the one who's going to the in-person college she has a visual learning disability and to put her in a standardized test is to inflict extreme pain on her. So we didn't want to do it. And so if you are going to refuse, at least now in the United States, in some of these schools you can refuse to take these tests. But if you do and you're coming from a homeschool situation, they will place you in lower level classes once you start at college because they feel that they have no proof that you can succeed and in truth, I don't think that's a bad idea to. You know, make sure that you're coming in at the level that they need you to be at. So we knew they were going to do that. So instead, for our last year, I didn't teach her at home, I enrolled her in those classes so that she had their proof their own proof that she had done them. And so we started transitioning in her last year to college and she started making friends and learning the campus and things like that, and now she's down there full time but we have not taken both.

24:03
Both of my daughters have really refused the conventional college load. Um, the college that my older daughter goes to, that's online. It is an adult ed university and they really don't think you should take more than three classes and because they believe you can't learn and most of their students are balancing life and work can't learn and most of their students are balancing life and work. And so my daughter started in that and she was able to continue working on the farm at the same time and because, as farmers, we are income eligible, she got a very heavy financial aid package and then, when she was able to continue working at the same time she incurs no student debt whatsoever was able to continue working at the same time, she incurs no student debt whatsoever and she's actually earning money while she goes to school. She's putting money into savings and building her personal wealth. And we noticed that with her. Wow, it worked really well to be working and doing classwork For her, that balance of the physical and the intellectual was really productive.

25:08
And so our younger daughter, who was going to the more conventional setting, was able to say you know what? I refuse to take this huge course load. That's unreasonable to me. You know she now had that model set where she's you know the other kids are in much higher, they're taking many more classes. And she has said you know what? I'm not going to learn anything If I do this. I am going to continue working on the farm as well and I'm going to take a lower course load and I want to enjoy myself. And so she took enough to be considered full time, but the bare minimum to be considered full-time, but the bare minimum and which still to her, is like, wow, that's a lot. But she's in her fourth week now and it's really interesting. She goes to the farm every morning and does chores and she gets to school around 11 o'clock and she finishes at five o'clock and she too is continuing to collect a paycheck.

26:05
So, anyhow, one of the observations that we've had is, as we've sort of left our little bubble, is how the world still continues to expect our young people to have this extreme course load. And I can't help my daughters. They share our suspicions Like why do they expect us to work so hard? What are what are they training us for? In fact, my one daughter, who's in the conventional school, she has to take a class called Foundations for College Success, and she was. She was complaining about this class on the way home. She said they show us these slides, mom, and they say you should be studying for every one hour you're in class, you should be studying three hours. So if you do the math, you should be studying 40 hours and then going to class as well. And then they tell you oh, and make sure you're getting lots of exercise, making time to eat properly and taking time for yourself.

27:00
And I'm looking at it and I'm thinking they have no idea. They don't even know what they're saying. They don't mean it. They can't possibly mean it. If the course loads are what these course loads are, Can they do the number of the math of how many hours a week? It doesn't work.

27:16 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
So, they're.

27:18 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
They're very critical of that and I have really appreciated that they have stayed living with us while they enter into this, because they need to come. You know you could call me a helicopter parent or over controlling if you will, but I have appreciated that they come back into our culture that says no, no, working that hard is not acceptable. And if you are working that hard, something is wrong. Either someone is making an unrealistic demand or something's not working correctly for you. You should be enjoying your life. But I can't help but look at their peers and I ask the question are we training our youth to not enjoy their lives? And if they are learning to not enjoy their lives, then they become complacent in a workforce. They accept how we want them to dress, they accept how many hours are supposed to be put in and they go back into that grind. And that grind once again creates, it eats away at the sustainability of the planet. If you can't be happy, if you cannot be content, we talk about sustainability of the planet being that you know we have electric vehicles and solar panels, right, but the real sustainability comes from here, it comes from the heart. When people can joyful, when they can know how to be without having responsibilities. When they can know how to make themselves happy, then they are teaching concepts of sustainability. Recycling is important and getting a fuel efficient car or an electric car is important, or using renewable energy is important, or, you know, trying to reduce packaging is important, like. These are all little rules but none of them are getting to that core of. If you are happy, then that means you can go out into the woods or into a park and feel joy watching children on a swing, or feel joy because you got really delicious, nourishing local food. If you can celebrate that, celebrate time with your friends, all the things that money can't buy then you are really starting to key in on how we make the world more peaceful. And so I'm putting two children out into the world. They're engaging with the broader world in the different way now, and we're still trying to figure that out, like we're still learning the lessons. Oh wow, they still believe this, and so it's interesting.

30:14
But I'm grateful that they both chose higher education paths that permitted my husband and I and my parents to continue to have a role in their cultural foundation. They're not just leaving this and then getting thrown into this new existence where the value system is so radically different from what they come from. So I'm very fortunate. I'm fortunate that there is a college down the road, I'm fortunate that we have good Wi-Fi and that there's an online school that works. But so so far for us, it's going very well and we're not, like the normal Americans, incurring any academic schooling debt. You know, we're still building our lives and even though we don't work very hard, we're still, you know, building our savings and paying the bills and eating well at night together. And but my home has a lot more visitors now. I've actually had to invest in a nightgown.

31:12
So we're going back to fashion because I just never know who's sleeping here at night and I have to have a daily because there's these other students, now there's there's all these kids who want good food and they do like good food and they're hungry. So I never know who's in my house who needs to stay for the night. So I have a nightgown and I have learned that I have to do a daily count about. You know, I need I'm accepting reservations for dinner right now so that I know how much to cook.

31:44 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Oh, I love it.

31:46 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
That was many interesting subjects, I think what that? Now, the root question was how does it feel to be done with homeschooling and, in a way, you're not done, it's just officially you're done? I remember this summer at the end of term, like two days before school was out in the country that we come from, I realized one of our kids was done. I had to count on my fingers the years because we don't. We are school.

32:17
Yeah, silvia is done yes, sorry no I forgot, right, yeah, but I forgot, yeah, yeah. So I told her I think, hey, let's do the math, I think you're done. And then we had this very interesting. So tomorrow you're not in school and you're not not in school either oh, she's not, you're like not, not, not in school.

32:44
It became so funny and the funny thing is, nothing changed. Basically, our oldest son, who is now 18, when he was just about done with the nine, ten years of of education that are mandatory where we come from, um, people started asking him so what are you doing next year? And we've been traveling consecutively for six years now, a little more than that and he was like, why are people asking me this question? What am I doing next year? Next year I'm traveling and reading books and playing board games and having conversations, I suppose, like last year.

33:26
So it's this arbitrary. I mean, for you there's a little more in it because you've got the college thing, so there's a new situation. But for us, when our kids have gone from being officially homeschooled to being officially done with homeschooling, literally nothing happened. Yeah, it didn't change at all. No, no-transcript this. So in America there's very much this culture of leaving for college and living at the college. We don't really have that where we come from, but people move out fairly early in Scandinavia when they're 18 or 19 years old. Well, I'm just grateful that ours well, the oldest one is, but, but the two others that are older, they are staying with us.

34:23 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
I think they need a lot of years close to the core family Well yeah, coming from an agricultural background, the tradition of moving out early is you know. So I'm from a culture that's less than 2% of the population and the mainstream population tells us you know they have to move out, but that is a surefire way to destroy the rest of the 2%.

34:57
We are really reliant on everybody staying together, and not only that, but we're reliant on um, that we recognize economic value all across the three generations. My, my parents, um, have a lot of savings, but they have a lot of savings because they had Bob and me working with them, and um and the girls are working with with them. The girls are building up a lot of wealth because we are able to pay them and they don't have to pay for a separate house, a separate you know. We provide the vehicles and everything that we need because the family has an ethos of sharing everything. It's just all owned by the farm and everybody shares, and I see how that then magnifies wealth.

35:48
So, if you just want to talk about it from a pure financial, pecuniary position, not having to duplicate possessions builds wealth and being able to share everything builds wealth. And they have this idea of moving out and moving to a dorm room. Well, it's false independence, it's not real independence, because they're going into a situation where someone is still cooking the meals and someone is still making things happen for them, but in our situation, they balance independence and responsibility.

36:22
They still have to make decisions about the livestock. They have to make decisions about the livestock. They have to make decisions about how their time is going to work, and, because we all share resources, that's how it has to go. So and and we, because they're here, the farm stays more stable and because we're all working together, the farm continues to grow. Because the farm continues to grow, everyone continues to build wealth and we have houses and properties and things that we have acquired as a family together, so that, if they choose to stay with it, they will not face any of those normal start of life expenditures. They will all just be part of the farm. So they don't you know, they don't have to worry about how they're going to get a roof over their head or food into their bellies, so it doesn't make sense.

37:14 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Yeah no, no, but it's very interesting because it's one, one of my um. Another thing I'm very annoyed about is how the families have been destroyed, when I look at it, by this idea that we should be two persons, individual, living in single generation housing and not have a lot to do with our parents and siblings, and all this where I love the co-living and I can see how farms are. One of the last is it called a bastion in english as well? Yeah, uh to, to protect the family, uh, union and and all that comes with it. We saw it.

37:58
Also the cultural differences and, as cecilia said, it's normal when we are in denmark to move away when you're around 18, 19, and I, I moved away from home when it was like 2021 and that was late. People were a little like, oh, you're a little weird. Then we have lived and seen how life is in spain, where you live at home until you're maybe 26, 27, yeah, and that's just super normal. And, of course, the elastic band to the family gets longer. Yeah, but you, the core is there. The family is the the core. In many of them it's still. It has started to crumble, of course, also in spain, but, but it's nice to see it from a farm's perspective also. One of the places we love to co-live is with friends in denmark who has a family farm. It is three generation living together as well, and it's just, we did that when we lived in denmark we did that as well.

38:55 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
Yeah, yeah yeah, um, I I I do regret that we have separate houses. I mean, we're all close and the girls are on the same, under the same roof with me. My parents are in a separate house and my parents are aging now. In fact, while we've been talking, I've been getting blipped in because my mother had a very rough summer health wise and I've been trying to, you know, deal with cardiologists and things like that, and even six miles away is difficult, but at the same time it was pretty amazing that they went through what they went through and because we were all together.

39:37
You know, unfortunately my mother had to live in a hospital for most of the summer, for most of the summer. But my father had a family to come back to every night and a home-cooked meal, and his life is about the animals in the land, like he. Just he could not imagine continuing on this earth if he couldn't touch the land and touch animals and be with them, and so he never had to have. If, if we had followed the American culture, then the minute my mom got sick and this has happened to many members of our extended family, the minute someone gets sick, then it all has to go. You have to sell everything.

40:17
The land is in jeopardy, the culture and all of the learning that comes with that, all of the knowledge that very few people have anymore goes, and my mom became ill and my brother was able to work remotely from his job to go and be with my father in the hospital, and my father was able to turn to me and just say, please make everything happen. And, um, everything continued because we were all here and, and so they came back and the farm is still there and everything's still going on. Um, yeah, we can't the. The security of farmland is directly tied to the security of the family and the security of the family is tied to those gender.

41:07
It's not, it's, it's a husband and wife or, you know, a couple's union. There's definitely a couple's union, whether, you know, whatever the gender preference is, it doesn't matter, it's a, it is a union of a pair, because it's very difficult to do on your own. And then those generations that have to work together, and I know I've taken bashing from people who say, yeah, well, what if you're not married? And what if you don't have children? And it's still a union of the generations that can keep it going. It's really important.

41:43 - Cecilie Conrad (Host)
But if you really are not married and don't have children, the farms that we've been living at welcome people to come and join them at the farm, and then maybe you don't own it, maybe it's not your project, but you can still, I'm sure, be welcome to live at a farm, be part of that meaningful lifestyle and contribute to it, so that you get up in the morning with a purposeful life and and and this other thing that we touched upon you know being joyful, living a life where you can feel that you have enough and that you're part of something that makes sense, which I think is a has become a very rare feeling, actually, and so, no, we cannot all build a farm, because some of us don't have that union, but we can.

42:42 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
Then, if we accept that okay, I'm a single person and I'm not going to have children maybe reach out and see if you can be part of something meaningful we have had I have so many surrogate brothers, sisters and children, um, I, I have had a lot in my lifetime, um, and so you are right about that, there's always somebody coming in, and that is very true. Sometimes I ponder it like is it unjust and I joke, well, I'm not in the richest 1%, but I am the richest 2% Is it unjust that this is my culture and this is what I have? And then I'm listening to you just now. I think, well, it's a double-edged sword, it's there's two ways to look at this. You could say it's unjust that, um, I came into a lot of privilege.

43:36
Now, I didn't come into, um, extreme wealth that, like you know, 1% or wealth, but I came into into, I think, a more deeper wealth, a life. I was born into a family of farmers, raised by a family of farmers, in a community of farmers, and the land has always been my birthright. That is unbelievable privilege. But there are many people who, as we've just said, would value this, but do not have that kind of capital to walk into this. And you are right that the doors are always open, and you are also right in that the capital and the relationships that make it possible may not always be there, but those people also can go do something else, and I cannot like like travel europe so I think.

44:38
I think, um, there are. It's something I ponder all the time the astronomical wealth and privilege that I get, but on the other side, I don't. I don't get to leave the same way. So I have my fetters. You know, I am very tied to something, and so then I think, okay, some of us are born with a foot in the soil at all times, and my spiritual job is to put food on the table, this is and to keep the land growing and healthy.

45:20
And other people will come and go, because they have different work that they have been called here to do.

45:30
And so I think, though, to accept that that there are different places, you know, I have had to accept that I will never, I will never get to be the president of a college. That I will never. I will never get to be the president of a college, I will never get to be in a presidential cabinet, I'm never going to be able to run for office or be the secretary of agriculture or, you know, do any of these things, because one foot is always in the soil. And putting food on the table, um, but I also feel deep peace and happiness with that too, like this is why I'm here, it's okay, and I think that that gets back to uh, we're circling back around to an earlier part of our conversation where we said sustainability is in the happiness and knowing you know, knowing our spiritual calling and what we're supposed to be doing, and not spending a lot of time being resentful about the things we aren't doing or that the life path has not offered us.

46:33 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
Oh yeah, I'm being reminded of an episode we recorded with Don Jacobs, also known as Four as four arrows. I will link to it. But he talks about the, the enoughness he calls it, which is when do you have enough? And and can you be satisfied with enough? And? And? These days, um, we, we make our money, uh, the way we do.

47:06
I'm a work with marketing and consult and help a lot of people. I only help non-profits and good projects. I'm so, so, um, blessed that I can choose only to do that. Um, but sometimes when I get contacted by new people, I'm like oh yes, I would really like to help and I could earn more money, and more money is always nice. But I really also enjoy having time to doing my yoga in the morning. I really enjoy being around my wife and my kids. So there is this level of winning enough, enough, and I'm still working on the balance, because if you're an independent consultant, sometimes you get a new client, sometimes some fall off, so you always have a little overcapacity. But it's really a big challenge to say no because. But at the same time, I really loved my time with my family. I really appreciate it. I appreciate we did yoga together this morning and it was just wonderful time spent together. So I'm practicing saying no more and looking at what we have and saying it's good enough, it's nice.

48:19
I like it.

48:21 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
In Redefining Rich. I don't know if you guys saw that book. There's a whole chapter on the power of no and saying no, and I've learned that I actually say no more than I say yes. Um, but I, I, yeah, I've gotten very conscious about making that decision and, um, not worrying about it. Um, it's interesting.

48:44
I know you're vegan, so this might be a difficult topic, but we have to be very careful on the farm about selection, so you have to. If an animal is dangerous, you cannot keep it on the farm. It has to go. If an animal is sick, if the animal is not able to grow, you cannot breed it back. It has to go off the farm. You have to. We it's called the.

49:08
The word that we use in agriculture is cull. You have to always be culling. Just as the vegetable farmer prune uh, you know, weeds out, it thins the vegetables. You have to cull your livestock. You have to always be watching not to keep anything that could, if it can, transmit a genetic disease, it has to go. And it's ruthless. It is absolutely ruthless and it's probably the worst part of being a farmer is that you have to choose between lives and and, and how you're going to do this?

49:39
Um, but I have learned in business. I do the same thing. It is very easy as a farmer, particularly because it's hard to make a sale. Our food is much more expensive than what everybody else has, but I'm always. I have many different streams of income on the farm. There's the cafe, we have Airbnb, the vacation rentals, and then we have the food that we sell, and in all of them, someone is always asking like you're too expensive, or I want you to be open longer, or I want you to make an exception for what I do. And with the little dangling carrot in front of my nose, and if you, I'll give you my business. And I have actually learned. I have to call my customers too. I only want I only want customers who are going to accept that I'm an honest person and I will not charge you money that I don't need.

50:41
I'm just trying to make a living, and if you are going to come to me in any way and expect me to treat you as more important than myself, as more important than my family or as less deserving of a livelihood, then you are culled. It's just that simple. I mean, I've learned to be polite about it. I've learned to say things like I don't think I have what you're looking for or I. We have a policy where we don't do what you're asking for and good luck finding what you need.

51:14
But what I'm saying is get the hell out of my business, don't want to do, I don't wish to work with you. And it has been kind of strange because sometimes I've thought, oh, my goodness, you know I'm, I'm the, the, the marketing face of my family's business. I'm making these decisions. Who do we work with and who don't we work with? But if somebody is going to be tyrannical because I have to my worst Google review for my business is someone did a very bad review because I closed the cafe on the day they wanted to come to spend time with my family, okay, and they were angry and they wrote a review. I had kept it up there because I thought you should know that I'm going to do this.

51:56
If you cannot accept that my business is not going to be available to you at all times, then we shouldn't be in a business relationship. And this summer was incredible because this is something I have done since I've come to the helm of the business. I have just said okay, if this person is going to make me feel bad about what I have to do for a living, if this person is going to make me feel like I don't deserve things when I know I work very hard, then I'm going to very graciously find a way to get them to take their business someplace else. Just take your business, take your business. Take your business. Never rude, never rude. But if that's what it is this summer, um, my mother was very sick and she ended up having a stroke. She ended up having to go into a rehabilitation center. Then she ended up having, like, all kinds of health complications that were very difficult. My customers um, for a while she couldn't read and she couldn't see. Well, they, they showed up in the hospital to see her they.

53:10
They bought cards. When I said she needs to be cheered up and she needs to be thinking about who people are to rebuild those connections, they filled our mailbox with bright, colorful cards and big block writing wishing her well, reminding her of how they know us and who she is. When she was finally able to come back to the cafe, she couldn't walk from her seat to the bathroom without at least three or four people jumping up and hugging her, and that, to me, is why you cull right. This is why you choose who you will do business with. It's not that every way possible, but they have to understand who we are and what we were about.

54:08
And these are the people who, when I because we were going through a lot and it was very difficult, I also had one of my employees who broke his foot, so we were down. We were down my father, we were down an employee, we were working so hard. These customers all understood that we were doing our best, and the entire summer, every day, I was met with compassion, and that compassion is what fueled me to keep going and to keep doing this, and that keeps the business whole. So that's why you say no, no, you know.

54:46 - Jesper Conrad (Host)
That's why, um, I have another meeting that I do have to yeah, yeah, we also wanted to to the, but it's such a nice talk and we I've been saying, oh, we should find a way to round up this, yeah you should check in, uh, at a later point, uh, when months or half a year, a year, have passed, because we really love talking with you, shannon, um and we should come. We should also figure out to come. Well, we'll work it out. Thank you for your time today. It was wonderful and I will.

55:19 - Shannon Hayes (Guest)
I will make sure to send it out to my newsletter too. Thank you bye, bye guys lot of love bye.

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