Happy New Year! I’m coming back to you from winter hiatus later than anticipated, due to an extended illness and the now-historic teacher’s strike here in Los Angeles. During that time (which also saw LA pounded by torrential rains and floods), my daughters and I holed up at home and often lived vicariously through the videos of my guest today: homesteader Kip Smyth of the 1000’s of Roots YouTube channel. Via twice-weekly vlogs, Kip, his wife Carrie and their six children—ages 15 years to 19 months—document their permaculture-homesteading and homeschooling adventures living on a 500-square-foot off-grid home set on 20 acres in the Missouri Ozarks.

The Smyth family’s stripped-down way of life is deeply rooted in their Christian faith; and yet, as Kip reveals in this interview, this was an existence he never could have imagined growing up as a self-described “jock” in a secular family in suburban Los Angeles. Here, we talk about consumerism overload, his calling to Christianity, homesteading from scratch, and so much more.

Show notes:

-Kip’s troublemaker childhood in Thousand Oaks, CA
-From the party scene to finding himself on his family’s land in Alaska: “That’s when crazy stuff started happening to me”
-Becoming a Christian, Simpson University as a 25-year-old freshman, and meeting Carrie
-Arizona, the housing bubble and discovering Joel Salatin
-Working at Home Depot: “If consumerism is the problem, then I need to become a producer”
-Back to Alaska, and a brief foray into hunting and fishing
-Strategic Relocation and why the Smyths chose Missouri
-Primitive skills and the problem with the prepper mindset
-Learning to homestead from scratch, building debt-free, and the long-term vision for 1000’s of Roots
-Faith, their lifestyle as a calling, and Kip’s advice for other wannabe homesteading families