A few major events brought me to this place. And it does tie the websites previous blogs together. When my children graduated, my daughter being the younger of the two, they asked what are you going to do now? I said, sell the house, buy an RV and travel around the country. My daughter said I want to take a year off before college and so if you do it right away, I’ll go with you. So I did. My mom, my daughter’s best friend, she and I set out on an adventure. I sold everything. If it didn’t fit in the RV, it didn’t stay in my life. It was harsh, but was a reset. A separation from all the things that I thought were necessary in life to that point. I travelled and explored from June 2017- July 2021. I documented a bunch of it on our YouTube channel, Vagabounders and blogged some of it here on BrennaHobbs.com.
During the pandemic, I was living in an RV and felt the shortages more than most because there is no room to stockpile in an RV. And when the shelves were bare, I had to beg toilet paper from neighbors to get through it. Also during the pandemic I used the stay at home time to participate in the 2020 in 2020 challenge. The challenge was walk/ride/swim 2,020 miles with ratios used to make the miles equivalent. I didn’t quite make it (1975) but still was amazed at what was happening with my body during the effort. I had been on blood pressure medication by then for a few years. Two of them. And eating right to support the physical effort caused low blood pressure. I was overmedicated! I loved reducing medication. And that’s when I learned that diet and exercise (lifestyle) could mean no longer having high blood pressure. It was something doctors always mention, but never expect anyone to actually do! When I had to go back to work with the rest of the country, everything reversed. I thought that’s that.
Then in 2021, I met someone, his name is Matthew. He has roots in Kansas City – a business and 4 children of his own. We sold our RVs (he was RVing too), bought a house and settled down. And this is where another pillar of change entered my life.
Our house came with a few interesting things. When we first viewed it, we both noticed the previous owners had chickens, ducks, and all sorts of animals in the fully fenced backyard. They also had tomato plants growing where many people would have landscaping on the side of the house. When we moved in, we discovered the tree in the front yard actually grew apples that were edible. There were raspberry and strawberry plants mixed in the flower beds. We love those things that we thought cool. Matthew had a very expensively purchased bucket of survival food. Supposedly, two weeks of everything you need to survive in catastrophic situation. He bought it in response to the same pressure I felt during the pandemic. When he opened it up and I saw what was actually in it, I was angry. It was the most expensive rice and beans on the planet. I told him I could do better than that. He said okay, prove it. I watched a few videos on YouTube and one of them was a lady talking about growing enough food to feed her family for a year. I didn’t think that was even remotely possible. Boy was I wrong! I started down a rabbit hole of learning.
At the same time that happened, my blood pressure decided that my one medication was not enough anymore. I had spikes. The Dr wanted to add medication again. At that point, I sort of panicked about my health. I didn’t want to go backward. I liked only being on one medication. Actually I wanted to stop that one too when it came down to it. I asked the Dr how to make that happen. I got the usual, it’s not always possible. Once you are on blood pressure medication it is usually for life. And then she said something that really made me stop and think…hard. She said, “most people your age are one more than 2 medications for blood pressure. I thought, that’s can’t be true. I wasn’t even 50 at that point. And if it was true, why? Right about that time, I also read Good Energy by Dr Casey Means. This had me looking at my health in a whole new way quickly and really caring about where my food comes from. I knew I couldn’t grow everything I needed in my small city lot, but I could make connections with local folks that could.
When I started doing the things suggested in Good Energy, I started with an extreme version of the elimination diet. I eliminated all processed foods. Or so I thought. It is amazing how ubiquitous some things are. We started searching for grass fed meats, we stopped using salad dressing for a while. It was a crazy time. My birthday rolled around during this initial cleaning up of our diet phase. The year before we had found this awesome steakhouse. This year, we were afraid to go there because we didn’t know where the meat came from our how it was prepared. It took us a while to “get over” the fear part of things. We are both Christians and we decided that for special occasions we were going to just pray over the food and enjoy. This simplified going to a friends house for dinner. We didn’t need to interrogate them before accepting the invitation. We chose things deliberately though. And within a few months I had lost 15 pounds and my doctor agreed I no longer needed the second medication.
Now, I need to pause for just a second and admit to something. I have an auction addiction. It’s bad. I once came home with 33 cookie jars because I wanted one, but didn’t understand they were selling a “lot” of cookie jars. I have purchased land at tax sale auctions and in Kansas City, they have pallet auctions. Very dangerous for me. One of my trips to the pallet auction, I saw hydroponic machines. There were 14 of them. Right next to it was 3 retail display boxes of seeds. The kind like you see at the hardware store. The seeds were expired, but I didn’t care. The bidding started at $10. I won both for less than $100 combined! I had gotten a great deal and a million or more seeds. Shortly after that, Matthew and I attended a knife throwing event (a hobby we both enjoy) and a friend there mentioned she had gotten her lunch from a produce auction. She had said the magic word. Auction. I had no idea you could buy produce at an auction! I found one by me that very week. Funny thing about buying from a produce auction, you get a TON of produce. I learned very quickly I needed to learn how to preserve food AND share! One quick Google search about how to preserve tomatoes and BOOM I was learning how to make sourdough bread, we bought 4 hens for eggs in the back yard and our pantry can now support us for closer to 4 months for a fraction of what Matthew paid for that 2 week bucket of food.
We still have a lot to learn, but we have also come a long, long way. I still have to take medication, but I am working towards medication freedom! I built this website when I started RV living. I wrote a book about it which you can find on the Currently Available page. I plan to write a book about intentional living now too! I love the life we are building. I love the learning, and I love sharing with others about what is happening. If any of this sounds like you, I’m glad you’re here. That’s what this website is all about.