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Sometimes homesteading is idealized and you get stars in your eyes, thinking it’ll be so perfect… until it’s not. Aimee and John Willis of Vintage Meadows tell the story of how a health crisis made them pivot from their original life goals into homesteading. They bought 4 acres and gave it a go. Then they had to sell it all and start all over, and over, and over again. You might call it a failure, a pivot, or simply relatable – but whatever it is, it shows the resilience of two people who want to nurture themselves and their community well and who haven’t thrown in the towel just yet.
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Episode Transcript
Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda
A couple once idealized homesteading until, for a number of reasons, it became evident that it wasn’t the life for them. This is Episode 549, and our guests are Aimee and John Willis. John is now a full-time farmer for Vintage Meadows, and he and Aimee are a couple committed to real food and a healthy lifestyle, but it wasn’t always that way.
Raised in self-described fast food homes, both Aimee and John had health concerns that became their wake-up call. Aimee had ulcerative colitis and John needed a pacemaker. I’ll let them tell you the rest of the story, but suffice it to say their lives and career trajectory has been full of twists and turns. This couple has pivoted time and time again and somehow always landed on their feet. Their story and experience just may be a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and an inspiration for you, especially when your household is nourished and full of great food and love.
Before we get into the conversation, please follow this show on the app of your choice. When you click on subscribe or follow, it means you get immediately notified as new episodes are released and there’s no middleman. You can also download the Wise Traditions app directly to your phone on iOS and Android devices. Just put Wise Traditions Podcast in the search bar. Thank you so much for reading. We are grateful that you’re a part of our family.
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Welcome to Wise Traditions, John and Aimee.
How are you, Hilda?
How Aimee And John Became Homesteaders
I’m so glad you are here. You have the most interesting, crazy, and joyful story, as you like to describe it, John. Tell us about the moment when you were about to buy your land to become homesteaders and you felt like everything was coming together and then suddenly it was falling apart.
We had this awesome opportunity to buy this land right down the street from us. Everything was coming together. We had support from the community, support from our family. I couldn’t believe that it was actually going to happen, that we were going to get this land, and then I had this crazy episode with my heart. I already knew that I had this problem.
He has a pacemaker defibrillator implanted. He had it implanted in 2013. He was living a pretty healthy life. We made some changes. He bought some books about farming and got nicknamed Farmer John. We started going with it and then went to go buy this land. Right around that time, his defibrillator had shocked him.
We were in the emergency room and it happened again in the emergency room and we didn’t feel comfortable in that hospital anymore. We got transferred to like a big city hospital. They were like, “We don’t know what’s going on with you, but basically get ready for a heart transplant.”
Your own defibrillator or whatever you had inserted, that pacemaker thing you had implanted, was actually going off in wrong directions. It was shocking your body?
Yes.
It was a month apart.
It was appropriate, though. I didn’t need it.
We just thought that was the life that we were going to be living. The doctor said, “This is just something that happens and you’re going to have to deal with it.” It happened August of 2016. He was told not to drive for a month, and then a month later, the end of September, he went to go drive and it happened again.
Now you’re over in this other hospital and they’re telling you, “Get ready for a heart transplant?”
Yeah, no joke. Here’s what the doctor says because I’m like, “This is news. I had no idea this was coming.” They didn’t even know we were getting ready to buy a farm. They knew nothing about our personal story. I was like, “What kinds of things can I can’t do? Can I hike? Can I still be my normal self?’ he’s like, “Some of the things you probably want to avoid, you probably want to keep your hands out of the dirt because there’s a lot of things that can kill you in the dirt.” I’m not making this up, he knew nothing about our story. He goes, “You probably want to stay away from like animal manure because that can kill you as well.”
We looked at each other in the room and I went, “What?” We were in farm school. We had attended a school down south Illinois. We were all meeting farmers from all over.
We were all in at this point.
Big Ag homesteading.
I think we actually had to postpone our closing date because of all this. We ended up getting the farm. It all worked out.
No heart transplant.
Did you have to stay away from the dirt and the animal manure? Did you buy what he was telling you? What did you do next?
No, I probably went home and fed my chickens and fed our donkeys and just kept living my life. I wasn’t afraid.
You proceeded and you got the land, is that right?
Yes. We bought it.
What’s interesting to me is you are among the few people I know that then later stepped back from that lifestyle. Aimee, what happened? How long were you doing all the things on the farm when you realized, “This isn’t going to work for us?”
How long did we have it for? We’ve never had a forever home. People say, “This is our forever home.” We never felt like we had a forever home. We feel like heaven is our home. We had this land and we knew we were not going to stay there forever. About four years in, 2020 comes along, and I had started making sourdough bread and gifting it to every single one of our neighbors. There was a lot of encouragement from everyone saying that I should sell sourdough. I thought, “There’s no way I can sell sourdough.” He said, “Please don’t turn our kitchen into a bakery.”
She saw that as a challenge.
I said, “Can you buy me a 50-pound bag of flour?” He said, “Okay.” I have a picture of me holding the flour in our kitchen. He said, “You’re really good at cooking. We should cook the food from the farm,” because we work for a farm in Indiana. “We should cook food for our community.” I said, “We can’t do that. How are we going to do that?” He said, “We should start a food truck.” We connected all the dots and decided that selling our land would be the only way that we could start a food truck. We decided to sell our land because we knew in the future we would have another homestead.
A Different Kind Of Food Ethos
What a neat way to get food to the community, because all along you’ve wanted to nourish people. By the way, where did this approach to food and your food ethos come from?
I like this part. 2013, that’s when John had his diagnosis of his dilated cardiomyopathy. He had almost fainted. I’m a licensed hairstylist. I was cutting his hair in the bathroom and he said he felt funny and he started to lose his sight and his hearing. I called 911 and the ambulance came and we went to the hospital. They said, “You had no choice but to get a defibrillator, a pacemaker, implanted.”
Right around that time, he had purchased some books about farming, a book about chickens and a book about goats. I looked at him and I said, “What are you doing? We live in a cookie cutter subdivision. Are you becoming some farmer?” He said, “I don’t know.” I went on Facebook and I changed his name to Farmer John. Facebook doesn’t allow you to change your name back for 60 days, so it stuck.
You put that out there, it stuck. It was not changing. Everybody was calling me Farmer John.
It was a joke at first.
Yeah. He said, because of this heart condition, “I really want to start eating better. I want to get connected to the local food system and farming and whatnot.” Honestly, I had no interest because it wasn’t my thing. He started researching farm school.
This surprises me that you say it wasn’t your thing because weren’t you diagnosed with ulcerative colitis years prior?
2012, the year before. I was told I needed to be on medication for the rest of my life and suppositories. I didn’t like hearing that. I said, “There’s got to be another way.” That was the step forward too for me. I just didn’t really know what to do because I didn’t know a lot about food. I wasn’t really cooking a lot at the time. I just bought what the stores had.
We were both raised in fast food homes. My mom worked for a fast food chain. Her father owned a fast food chain. That was our thing. We just ate local. It was in Chicago. There was just so many well “good” food in the area.
I did know how to cook, but it was only with a microwave.
You guys have been through so much. You both had these crazy health diagnoses. You both were getting little seeds planted in you that something needed to change. It got to the point where you got this land, but then you decided, “Let’s not do the land, let’s do a food truck.” You sold the land?
Yeah. We had the land for about four years, and we got to do all sorts of amazing things. We got to breed a rare heritage breed of hogs. We were breeding hair sheep. We had miniature donkeys, chickens, goats. We had everything.
It was like an Airbnb for a petting zoo at one point.
Yes. Somebody needed a petting zoo. They were getting kicked out of where they were staying. We had them over. It was wild. That story was so fun.
That is so crazy. Don’t you have like a passel of kids?
Yes, we have five kids.
That’s how we named our food truck. Handful Bread Co.
Building A Farm In A Suburban Area
All right. Back to the homestead. I thought originally that you two had left because it became overwhelming, but it wasn’t that. It’s just that the people weren’t coming to you. You wanted to take the food to the people. Is that right, Aimee?
People were definitely coming to our farm. We took this raw piece of land that had never been a farm before just outside a neighborhood, and turned it into this amazing, beautiful landscape where there was grass growing and animals grazing. We let them roam. It was just so unique to the area because this was a suburban area where there was very little farms. Maybe every once in a while, you could find a small horse farm or something.
Also, chicken eggs on the side of the road were not really a thing. They are more popular where we come from now but they weren’t back then. It was a lot harder to find that. John had brought home a refrigerator from somewhere, a Tropicana refrigerator. I am the one with these wild and crazy ideas. I don’t know if they’re ever going to work, but I’m willing to try it out. I’m a number seven on the Enneagram, so if something doesn’t work, we’ll just move on to the next thing.
We had this refrigerator out front. We had a garden out back, a 20 x 26 garden, growing all the different foods. We also had our land, which was disconnected from our home. We thought, “Let’s start a co-op.” We started putting together these food bundles because we learned in farm school you can have a farm on a quarter of an acre and you can make it work and sell and even grow wildflowers and sell them. We just tried everything and put together these little farm bundles and had them for sale in our refrigerator. I don’t know if it was legal or not, but yeah, we did that.
Valuable Lessons From A Farm School
Before you move on, because this story is so chock full of interesting things, you keep mentioning farm school. What farm school was it? I didn’t even know there was a farm school.
Yeah, it was a great program. It’s called Central Illinois Farm Beginnings. It’s taught by all farmers. It’s a really great program. They brought in grocery store folks to teach people how to get into the grocery stores. They brought in local banks so that you didn’t have to depend on other federal financing or whatever. It was just all different things. It was on a local goat, dairy farm, beautiful place. That was one of the benefits. They had a kitchen on onsite. They would cook us lunch. Chefs would come in, we would do tours. It was such a great experience, but taught by all farmers.
John, you did it, but did you benefit from it too, Aimee? You didn’t do the school yourself, did you?
I needed somebody to drive because it was right after my first defibrillator shock. I said, “Will you drive me? I need a driver.” She drove me. It was two hours away, too.
He developed PTSD from driving because he was shocked while driving. I drove everywhere.
I don’t know if you guys know this, but a lot of cars have strong electrical fields. I think that PTSD was not just because of your experience, John, but because maybe that had something to do with provoking that extra shock.
I believe it. Every time I get in the car, it’s calmed down a lot now, but in those early moments, I felt like something was wrong every time I got into a car. I felt like something was wrong. I’ve read that before about the EMF and high speeds.
What It Is Like To Sell Farm Bundles
Especially, you can even imagine, electrical cars. Avoid the Tesla. Anyway, so you both came from these fast food homes and then you went to this farm school and started learning the ropes on how to care for animals and raise them well and have a garden. Tell me more about those farmer bundles or farm bundles that you sold, Aimee. What was in those?
We were raising meat birds at the time. We had layers and we were growing Swiss chard, green onions.
We had eggs. It was so small, so tiny. I would collect flowers and I’d put together these flower bundles and shared them on the internet. In 2017, friends of ours were getting rid of some ducks. They asked us if we wanted them, and we said, “Sure, we’ll take all the animals. Call John.” So many phone calls.
If you want to meet some people, tell them you’re starting a farm and you’ll take any animal or any equipment that they have. Every day I showed up at the farm, there was something there. Equipment. Tools. People just dropped it off. It was so fun.
If you want to meet someone in your community, tell them you are starting a farm and take any animal and equipment they have.
We went over to this friend’s house who had these ducks for us, and we hung out there for a while. We didn’t want to leave. They said, “Do you want to try some raw milk?” We were like, “Okay.”
We never had it before. It was new to us. In my mind, for some reason, I thought the raw milk was going to be thick like a milkshake or something. I don’t know why that was in my head. We tried the milk, it was amazing. Aimee, just being the person that she is, she’s like, “I need to get in touch with this farm and we need to work together. It’ll be amazing. We’ll bring their food together with our food and we’ll share to our community. We’ll start that co-op. It’ll be amazing.”
Did you have space on the land to have a co-op? You’d get food from different farmers or local artisan providers or whatnot, suppliers and sell it? Was that your idea, Aimee?
Yes. I wanted to work with several different people, put together a website where people can go and order or order from us directly. I would go and do the running around.
Our kids were delivering the baskets locally to our neighborhood and stuff like that. That was really fun.
I made a phone call to the farmers and I asked if they would sell wholesale. She said, “Sure.” We tried it out for a little while. People caught on and they wanted to order more. We were feeling stuck at the time, then the owners of the farm invited us on board to work with them remotely. We started to help grow that buying club. They already had a buying club with that we wanted to have, but might as well just jump on with them rather than starting fresh.
Were you working with this farm, your co-op, your own farm, your five kids and the food truck all going at once?
At one point, yes.
Have your ulcerative colitis cleared up, Aimee?
Yeah.
John, you said you didn’t get the transplant. Is your pacemaker still in there?
Yes, it’s still in there. I think some point, I’ll have to get a new one, but yeah, I’m happy and healthy.
He had to get it rewired in 2016.
We figured out the issue. We ended up going to another hospital out of Ohio and they figured it out.
Making The Big Decision To Leave Homesteading
When did you realize, “Though we have this land and we have our kids and we have the food truck and we have the co-op, we have all these things going, we need to make a shift here?” I saw it happening online because I follow you guys, you were like backpedaling from the homesteading life, which I had never seen anyone do. What was the impetus for that?
Before Aimee and I got married, we did some pre-marriage counseling. Part of that, you plan your life out a little bit and we’ve always planned to move away. When we talked about moving and possibly leaving our family and friends, community and all that, I was like, “There’s no way I’m leaving unless it’s 40 acres or more.” We started looking and obviously real estate land is crazy expensive. I was like, “We’ll settle for nothing less than twenty acres.”
We’re looking, it was 10 acres and then it was 5 acres, and then it was down to 3 acres. We were like, “We’ll just take anything.” We ended up getting a three-acre lot out in Indiana after crazy real estate market of looking for land, looked at 50, 60 houses. The area that we live in is heavily Amish, so their need for the land is felt much greater, so they’re willing to pay more because they need land for their horses.
One time, we were outbid by $125,000.
By an Amish person?
Yes, and it was cash.
I didn’t realize that, because I guess they also have large families, maybe they’re wanting more for their children and their children’s children and their horses.
The horses need at least three acres. It cannot be any less.
We found a spot, it was beautiful.
A 1,500 square foot A-frame home for 7 people.
We had some woods, we had some grass, trees, put a big garden in. We moved in, it was great. We put our food truck in a shop and moved in. A week later, we went back out to that food truck in our shop and the whole entire thing was covered in mold. That same week, inside the house, we found that there was black mold in the house. We basically had to move out of the house into an RV that we were living in through transition.
It was during the winter, so it was end of October, November, December when we lived in the RV in our driveway.
You must have been so disheartened
A little bit, yeah.
It was hard but beauty came from it. We had it professionally remediated. We demoed it. People came in and started blessing us and showed up in big ways. It was so awesome. This new community that we moved into really just picked us up and just loved on us. It was amazing. We demoed the house, remediated, and then we were like, “We’re broke. I don’t know how we’re going to do this.”
I’m not a carpenter home improvement guy. It’s not my favorite thing in the world, but Aimee loves it. She started picking up tools and just started rebuilding our home and putting up trim and wood and flooring, redoing our stairs. We really turned this place into a beautiful homestead. Gardens everywhere. Chickens out in the chicken tractor, our kids were moving them across grass. We were incubating eggs. We were just getting ready to have some more animals.
We had elderberries out front.
We were just getting ready to get some more animals, get some pigs out in the woods. We had this feeling, this change of heart that, “I think it’s time for another change.” This was almost like a test. This was a season. This was a phase. We sold that house, went back to market, looked through 30, 40 houses, couldn’t find anything. Our search range kept getting wider and wider. The demand for homesteads, everybody wants land right now. We couldn’t compete with that. We couldn’t afford it. We had five kids, we had bills. We ended up finding this beautiful home in a neighborhood, and I didn’t want it one bit. She walked in and started crying. “It’s the most beautiful house I ever seen.”
It was an HOA subdivision.
For some people, that would be the antithesis of the homesteading lifestyle. You are moving into a place where there’s this homeownership association that tells you you can’t plant something out front that’s edible. It has to be just green lawn and flowers. I can see why it might have not been exactly what you were expecting, John.
I said, if he wasn’t a farmer, I probably would be struggling with that a lot more. We’re on the farm all the time for work, and we feel like that was the compromise. That was okay.
You were still associated with, is it called Vintage Meadows, the farm that initially was part of the co-op?
Yes.
You realized, “This is one way we can stay connected with the land and with what we feel passionately about.” The food truck went by the wayside.
We ended up selling that. It was really sad. That was a hard season to let that go too because so much love. We used all local vendors. All of our food was local. We used all organic ingredients. We deep fried with lard.
It’s so fun.
I would love to see a chain of that food truck across the US right now.
We did an event for the Children’s Health Defense back in Illinois. It was a huge success. It was great.
So many people in this in this movement right now, this alternative health movement that’s also been drawn into the mainstream through the Make America Healthy Again, they’re about avoiding seed oils, sugar, and processed foods. They get some of the basics. It sounds like your truck was providing that, but you had to let that go.
Yeah.
Hold on. Our one daughter, she misses it.
She loved that food truck. We were grooming our kids. They were involved in it. They were helping out at all of our events. They would show up and be hanging out on the truck. Our one daughter was learning to get her food server license or whatever that was required.
Yeah, we trained them. It was fun.
What Does Aimee And John’s New Home Looks Like
The new place, we talked about it and we felt things were changing. Our kids were growing up a little bit. We had homeschooled traditionally prior to all this. When we moved out to Indiana, there was a small private school that was highly recommended. The farm that we worked for, their family was connected to it. Their whole family had gone to it for generations. We felt like it was the right choice to put them into that school. With that came sports, lots of friends hangouts.
Piano lessons. New phases in life for all the kids. Things that we never imagined they’d be into, but they are. We love that.
It felt okay. To this day, we still would love to go back to land. We would love to have a homestead. We still talk about moving. We’ve moved three times in a few years. We still talk about it, but right now, it feels really good because we have neighbors. Knowing your neighbors just brings so much peace and a renewed confidence like everything’s going to be okay. When you start to know your neighbors, it makes you feel just at home.
When you start to know your neighbors, it makes you feel at home.
Somebody needed oats from us one time. I got a text message from one of our neighbors, “Do you have any oats for oatmeal or cookies or whatever?” I told John, he goes, “What?”
That was amazing. It was like first time we had that.
“Somebody asked us for something, some food?” I’m like, “Yeah.”
We’re ready to bring arm loads of just everything. “We’re coming over.”
Do you know what I love about this? You have been flexible, you have been flowing, you’ve been going where your intuition and your spirits were leading you. At first you were countercultural. Let me just frame it this way. You were countercultural because you were homesteading and you were homeschooling, and now you’re counter, counter-cultural because you’re not homesteading and you’re not homeschooling. You say it’s been good, right?
Yeah. There’s pros and cons to live in a neighborhood. The amount of ambulances and police sirens, people walk in front of your house walking their dogs and there’s just people.
It’s different.
You know what you’re doing. I think you’re giving people permission to make choices that are different regardless of whether going with this stream or that stream. It’s like, do what’s going to serve you and your family best and the world. Follow your passions, too.
You can buy food that makes you feel like you live on a farm.
We live on a very peaceful lot. We have this beautiful, healthy flowing creek in our backyard. That brings all sorts of nature. We have deer, wild turkey, swans. There’s this natural swan population in our area because of the St. Joe River. Extremely healthy water body. That connects to our creek. We just have so much. There’s a raccoon in our neighbor’s tree.
Every morning, we look out our window and there’s this little hole and kingfisher birds and hawks. Just so much. It’s so beautiful. It makes the transition a lot easier to have all that nature, that peace, that beauty. Work for me really allows me to be a part of nature with the animals walking through the grass, the pastures, the woods, getting my hands dirty and tractors. If I didn’t have that, I probably would be pushing a lot more for a homestead.
What about you, Aimee? What does your days look like?
Thinking about food all the time. Always cooking, always thinking about what I’m going to make for dinner. We joke all the time when it’s getting close to bedtime that we’re making our ninth dinner, because I am always cooking. John’s like, “Why are you thinking about food so much?” I said, “It’s because our kids need to eat. They need to eat.”
I want to do everything I can to provide them with the best food possible so they’re not looking outside of that. Also, so they’re learning. I’m providing a place for them to learn. Also, cleaning our house and laundry and all the regular, everyday life mom stuff. Running around, picking up the kids. We live about 25 minutes from work, church, and school. I have to plan out my day accordingly.
Teaching Children All About Food And Nutrition
When you say learning, I like that because some people think, “If my kids are in public school or private school, I’m not educating them.” They are learning when they’re at your side all the time. Tell me some things that they say to you related to food. What are things that they’re picking up along the way besides the food truck interest?
Our oldest son, he had a sleepover and they had cereal for breakfast. He’s like, “I haven’t had pasteurized milk in forever. I won’t do it. I didn’t do it.” I was like, “yes, I’m proud of you, son. Good job.”
It is really interesting. We’re in such a fun phase of life right now, and it’s very humbling. I don’t want to pick on our kids too much, but we’re seeing a lot. When they’re, I would say, ten and under, you have them under your umbrella, and you can protect them and guide them. They think you’re really cool as parents. They’ll listen to you. When they get older, they start to shift in their own way and they get to do their own things. You’re like, “Why are you doing that? I don’t want you to do that.” They do it anyway. You just have to give them that grace because they’ll eventually come back as long as you’re providing them with that strong foundation of good wisdom and all that, and cooking.
If they ask for money for Taco Bell, you just got to go, “Okay, whatever.” It’s a part of life and they’re going to be with their friends and they’re going to do what they want. As long as you give them a lot of grace, and just, again, be who you are as parents, but don’t be overly bossy and overly controlling. Our oldest son, he is learning about his skin. He’s going through some skin trouble right now, not majorly, but he had discovered that tallow is good for your skin all on his own.
He’s like, “Mom, did you know tallow is good for your skin?” I’m like, “Where did you hear that?” He’s like, “I heard that I should potassium max.” I was like, “What’s potassium maxing?” He’s like, “Potassium’s really good for your skin and you can find it in these foods in coconut water.” I’m like, “That’s really interesting.” Every time we go to Costco, we buy coconut water for him. Our daughter loves cooking, loves being in the kitchen, and she wants to go to culinary school one day. It’s really cool to just watch them grow up and be their own people, be their own person.
What Aimee And John Planted And Grew In Their Farm
It’s so interesting to me that you went from a hairstylist, Aimee, to basically a chef and a mom who’s taking care of her children in such a beautiful way. I want to hear a little bit now more, because I’m thinking about careers a little bit. John, you literally embodied Farmer. John. What started as a joke, you’re doing at Vintage Meadows. This isn’t a controlled animal feeding operation farm, is it?
No, it’s a beautiful farm. We raise grassfed beef and we have amazing pastures. The Northern Indiana days can just be so beautiful, spring, summer, fall and winter. I’ve been really enjoying that beauty. We’ve also raised pastured hogs. They’re out on pasture. We move them every day. Grass-fed beef. We partner with a bunch of other farmers and we also do little bits of chicken and turkey too just for fun because the owners of the farm just love homesteading and doing their own thing as well. There’s always something fun and exciting on the farm.
We have fermented foods, we have soy-free eggs, we also have sourdough. That was a really cool opportunity for me if I could share that. I got the call from our baker, an Amish woman, and she said, “I wanted to know if you were available to teach me how to make sourdough. Your husband volunteered you.” I was like, “Okay. Sure, I guess.” I really didn’t have anything to say other than okay.
I was mostly worried. I have a lot of tattoos and with who I am, I was wondering, do I have to cover myself up? How do I present myself? How do I communicate? We got to have that experience of teaching this Amish baker how to make sourdough because sourdough is not a thing in the Amish community. They don’t make it.
That’s so interesting. I thought you could just be yourself.
I was myself, yes.
What I love about Aimee is she’s just an artist at heart. The food, the food truck, farming, hair, all those things are just because she’s so creative and she just loves those outlets. I think what’s super special about her is that she is, whatever she does, it could just be so simple and basic, but she just takes it and beautifies it. It’s so interesting to watch her take it and run with it. It always turns out so amazing.
I think there’s a parallel between that and being on a farm, a regenerative farm, like the one you described that Vintage Meadows is. What I mean by that is this. In the CAFOs, all the animals are squinched together. They’re very stressed, they’re standing in their own feces. They’re concentrated animal feeding operations that are very utilitarian to get the maximum output from the beef or the chickens or whatever you’re trying to raise.
It’s just very systems oriented and really with the outcome in mind and not the method, but our regenerative farms, you’re letting animals, as Joel says, express their creativity in their own way. The pig wants to use his little snout to burrow and plow things. The cow wants to graze freely, not be standing in its feces. There’s something artistic and beautiful in that, too.
Absolutely. I get to witness that every day.
John also likes to talk to the cows.
Yes. I give them voices. We sing karaoke together.
They understand it.
Aimee And John’s Most Important Health Tips
That is so beautiful. You two are an amazing, beautiful pair. I’m so glad you shared your story with us. I think it’s going to inspire and encourage people, whether they’re homesteading or not, whether they’re living in the suburbs and whether their kids go to public school or private school or if they homeschool. You’ve shown them that lots of options are available. Now I want to pose to you at the end here the question I love to pose at the end. If the readers could only do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?
I think get some people in your lives. I feel that when we’re connected, where we’re together, doing life together, I personally feel so much better health-wise.
To have people. Surround yourself with community. Get to know your neighbors.
That’s what I would say.
That’s beautiful. What about you Aimee?
I say be open to change. Just be willing to change because if you stay in one spot and you’re not willing to change, I feel like you’re just not going to grow. When you grow, you see so much beauty come from that. Just change your mind. Change where you’re living, change whatever. Whatever comes your way, if you are open to change, good things can come.
Whatever comes your way, if you are open to change, good things will come.
Wonderful words to end on. Very inspirational. Thank you, Aimee and John, for being on the show. On behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation, we are grateful.
Thank you, Hilda.
Thank you for having us. Happy to be here.
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Our guests were Aimee and John Willis. You can check out their website, VintageMeadows.farm to learn more. Now for an Apple Podcasts review from Pangia81 saying, “I love this podcast. This podcast continues to help me understand my health and how important the correct foods and practices are to my daily life. I am an avid listener and a member. Thank you for continuing to bring me this information.”
It is our pleasure. Thank you so much for not only listening, but also becoming a member. Everyone is invited to become a member, just go to WestonAPrice.org, click on Become a Member Now. It’s only $30 for the year. I can’t believe how little that is. You use the Code Pod10 so you can make sure it’s $30 and not $40. The bottom line is you get a quarterly journal. You get to be a part of behind-the-scenes interviews, and you have the satisfaction of knowing you’re supporting our mission of education, research, and activism. Thank you so much for reading, my friend. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.
About Aimee & John Willis
John and I were your typical Chicagoland suburb family with a hairstylist mom and local 399 union worker dad with two kids. In 2012 I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and was told I needed to be on prescriptions for the rest of my life. Then in 2013, things took an even sharper turn. John, jokingly nicknamed Farmer John on Facebook after reading books about chickens and goats, was diagnosed with a heart condition called dilated cardiomyopathy that required him to have a pacemaker/defibrillator implanted. This news propelled us forward on our better health journey. We really needed to know where our food was coming from.
John received a small scholarship to a farm beginnings program in Champaign / Urbana, Illinois in 2016 and reluctantly invited me along. This program taught us all things farming – small beginner homesteading with animals on pasture to major mono-cropping and CAFO’s. We met famous chefs and well known farmers from all over the Midwest. That same year we bought a 4-acre lot, zoned A1, a couple blocks away from our house in our unincorporated subdivision. We had big dreams for this land so we launched a kickstarter campaign and raised over 10k in 14 days with the help of family and friends.
Our family was introduced to raw dairy and the idea of buying from a local farm in 2017. During this time we became 1 of the 21 Chicagoland pickup locations for Vintage Meadows Private Buying Club in Goshen, IN (search group on fb) John and I wanted to have a buying club of our own, but the startup was a little tricky, so we decided to embrace the model VM had in place and work with them remotely. We sold our 4 acres in 2020, bought and designed a food truck called Handful Bread Co. to serve better food to our community using a lot of what Vintage Meadows had to offer. In January of 2022, John was asked to become a full-time farmer with Vintage Meadows. We moved our now family of 7 and officially called Indiana home in July of 2022.
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