So y'all have heard me talk a lot about our harsh winter climates and how we homestead

among the blizzards and the windstorms and all of that fun stuff. But today I'm bringing on

some special guests to talk about the other side of harsh climate homesteading. How can you

homestead in the desert? Is it even possible? We're going to find out today and I am so excited to

welcome Tara and Chad. Thanks for coming. Hi, we're so happy to be here. Yeah, so just start us off,

tell us a little bit about your guys' homestead, where you're located, what your zone is, all that good

stuff. Yes, okay, so I'm Tara and this is my husband, Chad. We are actually located in the Southern

California Mojave Desert. So it is Joshua trees, tumbleweeds, and a lot of dirt. And I always

desired that farm lifestyle, that homesteading, where you're just getting back to the basics.

And we always knew that this was home for us. We never really had that opportunity to leave and

actually pursue a farm life. So one day I told him I was like, I need greenery. We need to figure

something out. And he was like, how do you expect to do that? And I was like, I don't know,

like let's just try. And so we actually got strawberries. And Chad helped me learn how to compost

the strawberries in order to grow in those. And then that covered our ground with some mulch.

And from there we were like, wow, if we just mulch the ground, you know, it'll hold some moisture,

we could probably grow more things. And so we started building from there and realized like

zone 8B, even though we're in the desert, it's a really good growing zone. So we just kind of

started expanding from there. And he really got into fruit trees. He's growing a banana tree.

Like we just learned that because of the sun and how much of the sun we have throughout the year,

we actually are in a pretty good growing zone. We just took that brown dry desert and had this

perspective that we just couldn't do it here. And you changed that perspective and realized like

we really could do things. It's just changing your perspective. Absolutely. So you guys were there

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